OPPENHEIMER’s first reactions praise Christopher Nolan’s “most impressive work ever”.

Christopher NolanThe latest highly anticipated film hits theaters next week and the first reactions are rolling in. The nearly three-hour-long atomic bomb epic premiered in Paris, France this week, and is being called a “spectacular” and “daring achievement.”

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, former critic Kenneth Turan hailed “Oppenheimer” as “arguably Nolan’s most impressive work in the way it combines his recognized visual mastery with one of the most profound characters in recent American cinema.”

Matt Maytum, deputy director at Total Film, said Nolan’s latest has left him “blown away”, adding: “[It’s] a character study on a grander scale, with a sublime central performance by Cillian Murphy. An epic historical drama but with a strong Nola sensibility: the tension, the structure, the sense of proportion, the surprising sound design, the extraordinary images. Oh.”

Associated Press screenwriter Lindsey Bahr called the film “a spectacular achievement in its truthful and concise adaptation, inventive storytelling and nuanced performances by Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon and many, many others involved “.

“Totally engrossed in ‘Oppenheimer’, a dense, sonorous and tense film partly about the bomb, mostly about how doomed we are,” wrote Jonathan Dean, writer for The Sunday Times. “Happy Summer! Murphy is good, but support is essential: Damon, Downey Jr and Ehrenreich also bring gags. A bold, inventive and complex film to rock its audience.

Oppenheimer is based on the 2005 book “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, and follows the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II through the eyes of theoretical physicist and Manhattan Project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer. Longtime director collaborator Cillian Murphy gets her first lead role in a Nolan tentpole in “Oppenheimer,” which also stars Matt Damon as director of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves Jr. and Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Also starring Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Michael Angarano, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek and more.

Bird previously raved about Nolan’s adaptation of “Oppenheimer” during a conversation at the Institute for Advanced Study last month, saying:

“At the moment I am in awe and recovering emotionally after seeing it. I think it will be a stunning artistic achievement and I hope it will actually spark a national, if not global conversation about the issues Oppenheimer desperately wanted to talk about: how to live in the atomic age, how to live with the bomb, and about McCarthyism: what it means to be a patriot and what is the role of a scientist in a society steeped in technology and science, to speak out on public issues.

Notably, ‘Oppenheimer’ is Nolan’s first R-rated release since 2002’s ‘Insomnia.’ It also marks his first partnership with Universal Pictures following his departure from Warner Bros., where he spent more than a decade directing films such as “Interstellar”, “Inception” and its “Dark Knight” trilogy.

“Oppenheimer” hits theaters nationwide July 21.

via: variety