Oppenheimer proved to be one of the most celebrated films of 2023 – with a staggering seven Oscars at the Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

With an all-star cast including Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, and Florence Pugh, and directed by the esteemed Christopher Nolan (the man behind Tenet, The Dark Knight, and Dunkirk), the film was destined to be a hit from the outset.

Based on the story American Prometheus – the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer – the film tracks the physicist as he changes the world, for better and worse, with the creation of the atomic bomb.

Following the scientist’s life from 1929 through to 1959, the harrowing drama tracks what some believe could be the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it.

Released on July 21, 2023 (the same day as Barbie), Oppenheimer immediately became a blockbuster – now standing at a near-perfect 93% critics rating and 91% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Here are what the reviewers have to say about the film:

“Oppenheimer is an unapologetically brainy movie with great actors playing real people, a true story with important details many viewers will be learning for the first time, and which, despite its roots in reality, feels massive.”

“Anchoring everything is Murphy’s stunning, award-worthy performance. Although sphinx-like in demeanour, the Peaky Blinders star still manages to convey (via those piercing blue eyes and gaunt, chiselled expression) the haunted internal struggle of a man who would describe himself as 'the destroyer of worlds'.”

“A masterfully constructed character study from a great director operating on a whole new level. A film that you don’t merely watch, but must reckon with.”

“This is a big, ballsy, serious-minded cinematic event of a type now virtually extinct from the studios. It fully embraces the contradictions of an intellectual giant who was also a deeply flawed man, his legacy complicated by his own ambivalence toward the breakthrough achievement that secured his place in the history books.”

“Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s best and most revealing work. It’s a profoundly unnerving story told with a traditionalist’s eye towards craftsmanship and muscular, cinematic imagination. Here, Nolan treats one of the most contested legacies of the 20th century – that of J Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), the ‘father of the atomic bomb’ – as a mathematical puzzle to be solved.”

“Oppenheimer is absolutely a movie that you'll want to discuss and chew over for days after first viewing. It's an absorbing and spectacular watch first and foremost, but also one that provokes you to think about the big, weighty topics that arose from Oppenheimer changing the world.”

“For the most part, the film is a towering achievement. Not surprisingly, given Nolan’s preference for shooting on Imax 70mm film, the picture has a depth of detail you could drown in. There’s no shortage of scenes of furious blackboard scribbling, the accepted cinematic signifier of scientific genius. But more interesting are the abstract moments; it’s as though we are venturing into the heart of the atom itself.”

“So few filmmakers know how to make, or are able to make, pictures this big, about grown-up subjects. Nolan shapes Oppenheimer’s story into something like an epic poem, focusing not just on his most famous achievement, but on everything that happened to him afterward.”

“The film is engaging, even over its three-hour running time – which genuinely feels more like two – and it’s an intoxicating trait of Nolan’s that he treats his audience like they have brains ready to exercise.”