Cillian Murphy plays the Father of the Atomic Bomb in Oppenheimer, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (and Then Hate the Bomb Again).

Christopher Nolan’s three-hour opus follows J. Robert Oppenheimer’s transition from young fission visionary to director of the Manhattan Project, culminating in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and subsequent Congressional hearings into the doctor’s Communist affiliations.

Despite its length, Oppenheimer moves like a rocket through a whistle-stop tour of modern physics. In textbook biopic style, we get a series of clunky interactions with scientific luminaries reciting some of their hits, including Gödel (“Trees are the most inspiring structures!”) and Heisenberg (“I liked your paper on molecules.”).

The film also continues Nolan’s glaring disregard for female characters, rushing through Robert’s overlapping relationships with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and Kitty Puening (Emily Blunt) as if to get them out the way, allowing the filmmaker to get on with the physics and ethics that actually interest him.

But once the movie finds its trajectory, it shoots right up the ranks of Nolan’s filmography. Where his insistence on non-linear narratives sometimes feels forced, it fits perfectly here, the twin timelines hitting parallel peaks and only continuing to climb. The director slices and dissects the moral issues from every angle, making you think and feel while being completely entertained throughout its epic runtime.

The performances are key to that enjoyment, with Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon and Casey Affleck standing out in an impressive ensemble. And the ever-watchable Murphy gives the performance of his career as Barbie‘s most unlikely partner since the Rappin’ Rockin’ Ken doll. His Oppenheimer is a complicated yet coherent figure, a man whose apparent contradictions serve to complete rather than confound the character (as happens in Killers of the Flower Moon).

After 2020’s tenuous Tenet, this is a stellar return to form, a masterful fusion of political, philosophical, psychological, historical and scientific intrigue. Expertly paced and beautifully shot, Oppenheimer is the best thing since sliced atoms.