Fat Man and Little Boy

Fat Man and Little Boy (1989) is a historical drama from Roland Joffé you can watch online on iFILM. It carries you back to the desert years in New Mexico, when a small band of people assembled the weapon that would split history into before and after.

At its core sits a clash of two men. General Leslie Groves, played by Paul Newman, runs the secret program like a military campaign: deadlines, discipline, results at any cost. He hands the science to physicist Robert Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz), a subtler, more conflicted figure who grows uneasy with what his own hands are bringing into the world. A quiet war plays out between orders and conscience while two devices nicknamed Fat Man and Little Boy take shape in the labs. Around them are the younger researchers played by John Cusack and Laura Dern, for whom the experiment's price turns out to be literal.

Joffé, already behind The Killing Fields and The Mission, takes on another heavy moral subject without reaching for slogans. Here's a curious angle: this film arrived more than three decades before Nolan's biopic and looks at the same Los Alamos through the general's eyes rather than the scientist's. It's for anyone drawn to the cost of a breakthrough. Stream Fat Man and Little Boy online on iFILM.