Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Fat Man and Little Boy takes a remarkably neutral stance on the controversy surrounding the decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan. A movie which lays out the details of the Manhattan Project might be expected to deliver a tedious lecture about morality. Although it does present the moral objections of some of the men who designed and built The Bomb, FM&LB properly places this story within the context of the Second World War.

Prompted by a letter from Albert Einstein warning of the danger posed by Nazi Germany developing nuclear weapons, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorizes the formation of the highly secret Manhattan Engineering District. Chosen to ram-rod this project is Gen. Leslie Groves, a brilliant Army engineer who headed up the construction of the Pentagon. Paul Newman is considerably more slender than the real Groves, but he forcefully captures the personality of the man who pushed the project to completion.

Newman's version of Gen. Leslie Groves is a frustrated Patton, who would much prefer to command troops in combat than to wet-nurse a group of Egghead scientists. But he pursues the myriad technical details with determination, and chooses the right men to compensate for his own lack of knowledge about the particle theory involved in this research. Drawing upon the skills of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz), Groves outlines the requirements of the project, the urgency of building this horror before the Nazis can complete one, and asks him how to go about it.

Oppenheimer is on the same wave length as Groves when it comes to creating the pressure-cooker environment which was necessary to make the deadline. Groves takes charge of security and logistics, leaving "Oppy" and his theorists to sorting out the details of making nuclear fission a reality. But Groves is constantly hovering overhead to remind them of security and that he is waiting to wield an axe upon anyone who forgets that the US Army is running the show.

John Cusak appears at the remote Los Alamos site to portray the brilliant young Dr. Michael Merriman, who did in fact die from radiation sickness after an experiment went very badly wrong. Laura Dern plays the sweet young nurse who plays the inevitable gratuitous love interest. Her role is hardly necessary to building a Doomsday device, and her performance shows it.

Fat Man and Little Boy is most effective when it gets away from the esoteric details about nuclear physics and gets into the political infighting and subterfuges which Groves resorted to in order to keep his eccentric civilian scientists in line and get the job done. Groves is not above a political compromise and some subtle blackmail when it is discovered that Oppy has an old flame who happens to be an outspoken Communist. Realizing that Oppenheimer is the brains behind completing this assignment, Groves craftily keeps this information as his hole card. It comes in handy when some of the physicists express misgivings about actually using the nightmare being assembled in the New Mexico desert. Groves co-opts the good doctor to get his support for actually using the weapon.

As The Bomb edges closer to becoming a reality, World War 2 in Europe is drawing to a close. Shortly before the German surrender, Groves is given a Top-Secret memo which revealed that the Nazis had never seriously pursued building a bomb of their own. With the impetus of the project vanishing, Groves suppresses this information and shifts his ultimate goal to the impending Postwar era, announcing his intention to give his country, "The biggest stick on the block!" And there is the matter of the continuation of the war by the Japanese.

Groves did sit in on many of the high-level discussions whereby the use of The Bomb was debated. But the movie falls short of depicting him as the aggressive exponent of its use which he in fact was. Not mentioned is the fact that Groves had a hand in selecting the cities which would become the targets of the B-29 which would deliver it. In reality, Groves strongly advocated using the first one on the old Japanese capitol of Kyoto. For all the wartime hatred of the Japanese, Kyoto was placed off-limits to Curtis LeMay's XXth Bomber Command out of consideration of the fact that it had little military value, and would only harden resistance on the part of the Japanese people. Secretary of War Henry Stimson was astute enough to over-rule Groves on this matter and Kyoto was ultimately spared.

Newman stays in character until the very end, when it comes time to detonate Trinity, the first test of the Plutonium device. Imperious enough to attempt to command the weather, Groves orders the test to proceed even as a violent electrical storm is sweeping over the Jornado del Muerte. Disregarding warnings about fallout extending to populated areas of Texas, Groves insists that the arrival of Armageddon takes place as scheduled. A sudden break in the weather is enough to convince everyone that Gen. Leslie Groves just might be God after all.

Trinity is an unqualified success, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki are incinerated a mere three weeks later. Although this movie is fairly accurate, it makes no mention of the hand Groves played in selecting the airmen who would actually fly the atomic missions. Perhaps it's not necessary to the central story, but it does understate the inherant danger of concentrating too much power in the hands of one officer charged with changing the nature of war forever. Groves was the forerunner of the cold, hard technocrats who forged the horrifying nuclear arsenal which the United States eventually acquired. Fortunately, his successors were removed from the process of making the decision of when to use them.

Lacking in dramatic impact and restrained from glamorous pyrotechnics, Fat Man and Little Boy is still a riveting portrayal of the man who let the nuclear genie out of the bottle.



Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12
Special Effects: Well at least you can't see the strings