In his review of "Oppenheimer" for The New Yorker, Richard Brody wrote that "the film is so intent on making Oppenheimer an icon of conflicted conscience that it pays little attention to his character over all." A prime example of this comes in the form of the Oval Office scene, where, having delivered the atomic bomb to his military bosses, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is called to a meeting with President Harry Truman.

Truman, played by Gary Oldman in a very brief cameo role, is positively giddy following his decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet finds himself faced with a chastened Oppie, who feels as though he has "blood on his hands." The President balks at this confession, waving a handkerchief in the physicist's face before declaring that the citizens of the leveled Japanese cities care only about who dropped the bomb, not who made it.