Fat Man and Little Boy

During World War II, the United States races to build an atomic weapon before Nazi Germany can. Brigadier General Leslie Groves takes charge of the top-secret Manhattan Project and recruits physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to lead its scientific work. The two men hold very different views on how the project should run, and their arguments are frequent, but they continue together toward the goal of producing a working bomb.

Roland Joffé directed the film and wrote the screenplay with Bruce Robinson. It came third in the director's filmography, after The Killing Fields and The Mission and before The Scarlet Letter. Paul Newman plays Groves, with Dwight Schultz as Oppenheimer, Bonnie Bedelia as Kitty Oppenheimer, John Cusack as Michael Merriman, and Laura Dern as Kathleen Robinson. Tony Garnett produced, and 52 cast members are credited.

The film was released in October 1989 and runs 127 minutes. It earned about 4 million dollars worldwide, a modest return for a production of this scale. On IMDb it holds 6.5 out of 10 from roughly 9,800 votes, and on TMDB 6.2 out of 10 from about 170 votes. A critics' rating of 4.9 out of 10 from 24 reviews places it below both audience scores.