The Manhattan Project

“Paul Stevens' high school science project has gotten a little out of hand. He just built an atomic bomb. Now he's got 11 hours to make sure it doesn't work.”

The secrecy around the nuclear weapons facility in his home town is enough to interest Paul Stephens (Christopher Collet), a gifted high school student who works out what the government is really doing there. Marshall Brickman has him steal the plutonium and build a bomb of his own for a national science fair. The film treats a teenager's brilliance and a government's secrets as problems that sit uneasily in the same small town.