![]() Recruited as an 18-year-old Harvard genius, he came to feel that a US monopoly on the bomb would threaten global stability and the future of humanity.Ī sensitive college boy and nascent communist who chafed against wearing military uniform at Los Alamos, Hall gave priceless schematics to Uncle Joe via his beatnik friend, the excellently named Saville Sax, who was the one who actually stepped inside the Soviet consulate. But this engrossing documentary by Hoop Dreams’ Steve James tells the story of someone who actually did something about it: Ted Hall, who confessed in 1998 – a year before his death – to having passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets while working on the Manhattan project. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.C hristopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, due in July, is sure to fit its eponymous physicist out with dutiful misgivings on the atomic weaponry front. Īnd if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called The Essential List. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. Love film and TV? Join BBC Culture Film and TV Club on Facebook, a community for cinephiles all over the world. ![]() John Wick: Chapter 4 is released on 24 March. Apparently, as long as the franchise keeps making money, one way or another John Wick will never die. We don't know if she kills en pointe, but we do know Reeves is in the film. Production has finished on Ballerina, set between Wick 3 and 4, starring Ana de Armas as a dancing assassin. The Continental, a three-episode spin-off series coming this year on Peacock, is set in the 1970s and tells the origin story of Winston and his hotel. The franchise is already growing in new directions. For an action series, that isn't a flaw, but it is a missed opportunity. Beneath the supersized action, the character hasn’t deepened over time. "A killer." The question is pointedly unresolved here. The film echoes a central question from all the Wick films, though: is he a natural-born murderer? Or a good man underneath it all? "This is who you are," the Marquis tells him. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is a sign of a slender plot engineered to suit the settings. ![]() The backdrops make the criminal underworld look like the subject of a glossy fashion-magazine photo shoot. A big, climactic scene is set on the steps and in the shadow of Sacré-Coeur. Running at 2 hours and 49 minutes, it is bigger than the previous films in every way – not better or worse, just more.Īnd in Paris, Wick has a meeting with the Marquis, the Eiffel Tower providing a picturesque backdrop. The twist in Chapter 4 is that John Wick goes full James Bond, globe-trotting and shooting his way through glamorous cities, with action that is even more spectacularly staged. Reeves' action moves and his sincerity, even when Wick is at his most stern, perfectly capture the blend of emotion and kinetic energy that define the films. He only murders villains and is driven by humanising grief. A hit-man who tried to escape the criminal life, Wick returns with fury and vengeance after his wife dies and thugs kill the dog she left him. That lethal, bereaved assassin is a good bad guy for our times, the natural extension of Tony Soprano, Walter White and all the other heroic antiheroes the culture has embraced. There is another reason the films are so entertaining and successful, though (with the franchise earning more than $500 million dollars so far). Why the Oscars were 'a slap in the face for Hollywood' The violence is just cartoonish enough not to be truly disturbing, at least most of the time. Knives, guns, swords and martial arts come into play, often in lovely, red-tinged light to the sound of glass shattering all around. Merging an artful aesthetic with brilliantly choreographed and shot fight scenes, it set a standard matched in its three sequels, including the latest, John Wick: Chapter 4. With the first John Wick (2014), Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski established a franchise that soars above most action films.
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