Day One

I am usually suspicious of docudramas, but from the books I have read and the documentaries I have seen on the topic of the making of the atomic bomb, I would say that this movie does not veer too far from the truth. There is very little of "certain events have been changed for dramatic effect." In reading histories you often get bogged down in details and do not have clear visual images of the people or environments, and documentaries usually try to piece together fragments of interviews and archival footage. I found that this movie was able to supply a coherent narrative while presenting the major players and events. No fancy cinematic effects, just straightforward story telling. It's a major undertaking to tell this story and this is a quality production.

I thought the choice of actors was quite good. Brian Dennehy makes a good general Groves and Michael Tucker is almost a dead ringer for Leo Szilard. Of course there is only one Oppenheimer, but I thought David Strathairn does a good impersonation. They kind of went overboard on Einstein's hair, that wig must have weighed several pounds.

It probably helps to have a little background on the topic before seeing this, since there are a lot of players. The whole effort had a cast of thousands, and this movie has a cast of several dozen. One thing I thought could have been better was an easier identification of the initial appearances of various people, maybe even subtitles. For example, Patrick Breen is listed as playing Richard Feynman, but I missed catching his appearance even though I was looking for him.

I thought the movie was particularly good in presenting the back-room discussions about the decision to drop the bombs. That will be debated for all time I am sure, but you come away from this thinking that it was a mistake. In that you would be in agreement with Generals Eisenhower and Marshall as well as Truman's Chief of Staff Admiral Leahy. Were over 200,000 people sacrificed in order to make a statement to the Russians or to prevent their taking a part of Japan? How many U.S. lives were saved by the bombings? Once there was the bomb, was it inevitable that it be used? Could not a demonstration have been scheduled? And so on.

For a complete history the book, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," by Richard Rhodes is good. I found the 1981 documentary, "The Day After Trinity," to be excellent. It has archival footage, but most importantly it has interviews with many of the major players.

I think this movie makes a sincere attempt to tell the story, within the limitations of a normal movie run-time, of one of the defining events in the history of mankind.

Day One by far is the best and most accurate full-scope portrayal of the events and people who ushered in the then-fantastic dawn of nuclear warfare. Perhaps it is the best portrayal merely because it is the most accurate and wide context picture of the what happened behind the scenes from 1933 to 1945. I was 11 years old and a schoolchild in Chicago that early August day 1945 when the world learned of the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima, to be followed up by the relatively forgotten "afterthought" atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki a few days later. Now, at 66, I can look back on 1933-1945 and the age of cold war-enhanced nuclear terror that followed it in some broader and clearer perspective.

Day One is actually three sequential and somewhat overlapping stories. The first story could be labeled "the Nuclear Theoreticians and Dreamers". It is essentially the story of Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and a few other academics, mostly European Jews who fled to the west as refugees from the Europe that Adolf Hitler was taking over and threatening. Their interest was essentially a nuclear weapon that could be used to counter the one they expected Hitler to develop.

Almost from the moment the United States government began taking a serious interest in their work, just prior to the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, commenced "the Project". With this commenced a series of major experiments in applied science and industrial engineering for purposes of creating the raw materials of atomic weapons -- Plutonium and Uranium 235 -- and for designing and building the actual bombs and trigger mechanisms needed to turn scientific theory into nuclear explosive reality. This succinctly describes the Manhattan Project, code name for the biggest and best kept secret in history, operated at a vast, hidden desert facility near Los Alamos, New Mexico under control of the brilliant Dr Robert Oppenheimer and the hard driving US General Leslie Groves.

From about the time Harry S Truman succeeded the dead Franklin Roosevelt as US president in April 1945 -- three months before the day of Trinity -- codename for the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico in the early morning hours of July 16, 1945 -- the project came under full control of the civil and military leadership of the wartime United States: Truman himself, secretary of state James Byrnes, secretary of war Henry Stimson, chief of staff George C Marshall, Fleet Admiral William Leahy and a few others, formed into a committee to decide national policy for the use of the shortly expected super weapons. General Groves and Dr Oppenheimer were members of this select committee, and their suggestions drove the policy that committed the United States to actual use of the bombs against Japan, which still fought on after the death of Adolf Hitler and the complete destruction of National Socialist Germany. But the true controlling power was in the hands of Byrnes and Truman himself. They were determined to end the bloody war against Japan -- and gain diplomatic mastery over Josef Stalin's Soviet Union -- through use of the most overwhelming weapons in human history. Besides, they argued, how could the Truman administration justify to the United States Congress spending the then-princely sum of $2 billion and deploying scores of thousands of manpower, developing a weapon that we could never dare use against a real enemy -- at a time when there was one American combat casualty for every two Japanese on every island that this country had invaded over the past two years? The horror of it is that it is still a compelling argument even today, 55 years later. So, against the futile arguments of some of the early nuclear theoreticians, the ultimate weapons were used -- for the first and so far only times -- twice in one week in August 1945 and thereby instantly ended World War II

Day One is told in the remorselessly cold and nondramatic style of documentary history. The dialogue from the meetings presided over by Byrnes and Stimson was taken direct from the released historical records. The color film of the Trinity explosion in New Mexico was real, not re-created. The film of the flight of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that released the Hiroshima bomb, was the authentic black and white film made during the flight. The voices over the plane's intercom -- "My God, what have we done?" -- are all real. The utter reality of it all has glued me to my seat and riveted my attention through three or more viewings.

Brian Dennehy's Commanding Performance as Brig. Gen Leslie Groves drives this TV-Docudrama about "The Manhattan Project", the Scientific/Militaristic Collaboration to Design and Build the First Atomic Bomb.

But Producing the "Super Weapon" opens up a "Pandora's Box" of Conflicting Philosophies and Strategic Questions that Human Beings were Forced to Answer, and Answer Quickly.

History is Played Out quite Accurately, or as Accurate as something like a TV-Movie is Capable. It's an Astonishingly Detailed Account of the much Talked About Event.

"The Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Trinity, Fat Man & Little Boy, Oppenheimer, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fall Out", and other Terms enters and remains in the Lexicon of Nervous Language to this Day.

This is a good Dramatization. David Strathairn is Excellent as Robert J. Oppenheimer, "Oppie", to His Friends and Colleagues. He is more of a Complex Person than Groves and it wasn't as Easy to Flesh Out, but is given His Due and enough Screen Time to be a Fair Account of the Man.

Overall, the Movie is a Must Watch for Historians and for Anyone Interested in War Room and Laboratory Intrigue where America's "Hawks and Doves" Mated and the "Love Child" and its Offspring are Still Alive and the Biography is Not Yet Complete.

This was a very ambitious project for any movie, let alone one made for TV. To make a historically accurate movie on the development and deployment of the atomic bomb, encompassing the scientific, political, diplomatic and military aspects, is, to put it mildly, daunting. Yet this movie largely succeeds, due primarily to a great script and an over-the-top cast. Dramatic tension is maintained throughout, and the script draws the viewer in to the multifarious issues involved. Many viewers have objected to the issue of the morality of the bomb's use being discussed, yet surely this is a legitimate issue for discussion and was raised by various players at the time. Ralph Bard, Undersecretary of the Navy, did indeed resign over its use. The movie, however, is in no way a pacifist screed. All in all a very well-made and thoroughly absorbing treatment of a momentous historical moment.

This is a very good film on the Manhattan Project, the building of the atomic bomb. It is especially a faithful adaptation of the book, DAY ONE, by Peter Wyden. Other reviews here have done a good job of description--I will add that it is far superior to the Paul Newman film on the same topic: FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY.

In addition, this film is a good teaching tool. I used to show clips from the movie to my U.S. History classes, particularly the latter portion of the film where multiple viewpoints are given of the reasons for and against the dropping of the bomb, whether or not it was necessary, and what would be the moral consequences if such a weapon was used. These viewpoints, from the military and civilian leaders in Washington and at Los Alamos, are not conjured up from the mind of some scriptwriter--they are historically accurate.