The Manhattan Project

I was quite excited to see The Manhattan Project appear as a Netflix instant watch selection. It was definitely one of my favorite movies growing up - yeah, I was an odd kid. The central character is a high school student - a genius that decides to check out his mom's new boyfriend by breaking into his facility. When he discovers they are secretly making plutonium, he steals some and builds a nuclear bomb for the local science fair.

Seriously.

His goal isn't to blow anything or anyone up - its simply to expose what the company is really doing. Having a girlfriend (a young Cynthia Nixon) that is a budding reporter with a lawyer for a father certainly helps. Naturally he gets in over his head, not realizing the power of the chemical he's stolen.John Lithgow is wonderful as the mom's boyfriend that runs the facility. He genuinely cares about Paul and wants to ease things to a peaceful resolution. There's even a young Robert Sean Leonard as a high school student.

I love this movie because it takes a honest look at how things can be hidden in plain sight, and the responsibility of citizens to know what is happening around them. I may not be a huge conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that there are things like this that happen every day in our cities/country/world that we are completely unaware of. This movie asks viewers to consider what they would do, how far they would go, if such a facility were to be built in their backyard. Still just as engrossing for me today as it was twenty years ago.