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Poster for Fat Man and Little Boy

Fat Man and Little Boy

The story of the extraordinary people who changed our world.

1989 · 2h 7m · PG-13 Drama, History, War
Directed by Roland Joffé

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Overview

Assigned to oversee the development of the atomic bomb, Gen. Leslie Groves is a stern military man determined to have the project go according to plan. He selects J. Robert Oppenheimer as the key scientist on the top-secret operation, but the two men clash fiercely on a number of issues. Despite their frequent conflicts, Groves and Oppenheimer ultimately push ahead with two bomb designs — the bigger "Fat Man" and the more streamlined "Little Boy."

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
50%
Tomatometer
Fresh

A singular, powerful experience.

Hal Hinson, Washington Post
Rotten

[Fat Man] is not resoundingly disastrous. That would imply a certain energy.

Desson Thomson, Washington Post
Rotten

Fat Man and Little Boy is a fiction based on the Manhattan Project, but it is thin and unfocused and hardly even suggests the enormous moral and practical questions that the scientists wrestled with in the New Mexico desert.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

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