The Manhattan Project (film)

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The Manhattan Project

Directed by	Marshall Brickman
Produced by	Marshall Brickman Jennifer Ogden
Written by	Thomas Baum Marshall Brickman
Starring	John Lithgow Christopher Collet Cynthia Nixon
Music by	Philippe Sarde
Cinematography	Billy Williams
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox
Release date(s)	June 13, 1986
Running time	117 min
Country	United States
IMDb profile

The Manhattan Project was an American film released on June 13, 1986.^[1] Named after the World War II-era program, the plot revolves around a gifted high school student who decides to construct a nuclear bomb for a national science fair. The film's underlying theme involves the Cold War of the 1980s when government secrecy and mutually assured destruction were key political and military issues. Costing $500,000 to produce, the film grossed $3,900,000 USD at the box office.^[2] It was directed by Marshall Brickman, based upon his screenplay co-written with Thomas Baum, and starred Christopher Collet, John Lithgow, John Mahoney, and Cynthia Nixon.

1 The plot
2 Analysis
3 Production
4 Technical Errors
5 Trivia
6 References
7 External links

[edit] The plot

Dr. John Mathewson (John Lithgow) discovers a new process for refining plutonium to purities greater than 99.99 percent. The U.S. government provides him a laboratory located near a suburban neighborhood in Ithaca, New York masked as the medical company, Medatomics. Mathewson moves to Ithaca and meets real estate agent Elizabeth Stephens (Jill Eikenberry) while searching for an apartment. A single mom, he attempts to win her affections by inviting her teenage son Paul (Christopher Collet) to take a tour of Medatomics and see "one of the sexiest lasers in the free world."

Mathewson is confident in the lab's cover story but Paul, an unusually gifted student with a passion for science, becomes suspicious when he discovers a statistically impossible patch of five-leaf clover on the grounds. Paul and his aspiring journalist girlfriend, Jenny Anderman (Cynthia Nixon), decide to expose the weapons factory in dramatic fashion. Paul breaks into Medatomics and steals a container of plutonium. To obtain maximum publicity, Paul decides to build a nuclear bomb and enter the product into the New York Science Fair. After convincing his mother and his school that his project is about hamsters bred in darkness, he begins research and construction of the nuclear device.

Mathewson and Medatomics discover that a container of plutonium has been replaced by a bottle of shampoo. A military investigation team, led by Lt. Colonel Conroy (John Mahoney), immediately arrives on the scene. Their investigation reveals that Paul is responsible for stealing the plutonium. Suspecting him of terrorism, the investigators invade Paul's home and discover he and Jenny have left for the science fair.

The agents capture the couple in New York City and Mathewson, who feels personally responsible for the crisis, has a private talk with Paul. He tells Paul to just give the bomb to the agents or "they'll lock you in a room somewhere and throw away the room." Several of Paul's friends at the science fair help him and Jenny escape custody and they become fugitives from the government.

In an effort to expose the company, Paul hatches a brave plan to return the bomb on his own terms. Ensuring Jenny is a safe distance away, he calls the agents from a pay phone and walks into Medatomics with the nuclear bomb surrounded by snipers and agents. During the standoff, negotiations stall and Paul suddenly arms the nuclear bomb. Mathewson, convinced that Paul is not an actual terrorist, attempts to intercede on his behalf.

Due to radiation from the pure plutonium, the bomb's timer suddenly turns on by itself and begins to count down with increasing speed. All sides put down their weapons and frantically work as a team to dismantle the nuclear device. They manage to disarm the bomb at the last possible moment (the timer reads 7:16:45, a sly reference to the first nuclear test on July 16, 1945).^[3] After a brief moment of relief, Conroy decides to arrest Paul. Mathewson refuses to cooperate and opens the door to the company revealing a large crowd, including Jenny and the press. He says to the military, "We blew it." With the weapons factory exposed, Conroy and his agents leave the premises and the residents of Ithaca embrace Paul as a hero.

[edit] Analysis

This movie is a cautionary tale regarding the dangers of nuclear weapon capability, a common theme of films dating back to Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).^[4] The theme was especially prominent in the early 1980s with the debut of the television film The Day After and the motion pictures Testament and WarGames.^[5] This movie is often compared to WarGames, with the similarity of a lone teenager almost causing an international nuclear crisis.

The plot is said to have been influenced by the case of John Aristotle Phillips, a Princeton University undergraduate who in 1977 came to prominence as the "A-Bomb Kid" for designing a nuclear weapon in a term paper using publicly-available books and articles.^[6]

[edit] Production

The Manhattan Project was filmed in and around Rockland County, New York. Locations included Suffern High School, King's Daughters Library in Haverstraw and the Orchards of Conklin in Pomona.^[7]^[8] The producers held an actual science fair at the New York Penta Hotel in which participants received $75, and utilized the set for filming. The film's director and screenplay co-writer Marshall Brickman had established his career as a co-writer on several Woody Allen films including Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), winning an Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for Annie Hall. The Manhattan Project would be his third film as director, following the comedies Simon (1980) and Lovesick (1983).^[9] Brickman received the President's Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films for The Manhattan Project. Brickman would not direct again until the 2001 Showtime television movie Sister Mary Explains It All. In the role of Jenny, Cynthia Nixon was nominated for the Young Artist Award in the category of Exceptional Performance by a Young Actress, Supporting Role.^[10]

[edit] Technical Errors

Dr. Matthewson claims that the device would produce a "50-kiloton blast." This is not nearly strong enough to do the kind of damage described. Some of the strategic nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal are capable of yields of up to 475 kilotons, and past warheads were capable of yields exceeding 3000 kilotons. For comparison, the Little Boy atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was only a 13- to 16-kiloton weapon.

Plant life is quite resilient to the effects of radiation. To find a patch of five leaf clovers, which had presumably been mutated by radioisotopes released during reprocessing, would have been evidence of a catastrophic containment failure. A radiation leak of that magnitude would have been lethal for workers within the facility as well as civilians within the local community.

Plutonium does not release radiation without undergoing fission. The half-life of pu-239 is 24110 years. Therefore the timer on the device could not have been negatively affected by the release of radiation.

[edit] Trivia

When the agents arrive at Paul's mom's home, she is briefly seen reading a first edition hardback copy of "The Fourth Protocol" by Frederick Forsyth, published two years before in August 1984, which vividly describes the potential danger of small kit-constructed nuclear weapons.