[3][4] In the midst of the Cold War crisis in October 1958, a group of scientists at the Vinča Nuclear Institute implemented a secret project led by professor Dragoslav Popović.

Although Mathé has dedicated his whole life to fighting against the possession of nuclear weapons and deeply despises the project which the Yugoslav scientists worked on, he proposes to carry out, for the first time in history, the delicate and uncertain intervention of replacing the bone marrow of irradiated patients.

"[21] In his Danas review, Pavle Simjanović focused on the differences between real-life events and the plot, noting that he had read a segment of Slobodan Bubnjević's book Alchemy of a Bomb in preparation for the film analysis.

"[22] Writing for Variety, Jessica Kiang drew comparisons between Guardians and Oppenheimer, but pointed out that "it differs in its careful inclusion of the heroism of ordinary people, and in showing how, while genius is valuable, it's only prolonged exposure to more everyday human decency that can irradiate the more bull-headed scientific ego with the compassion needed for actual wisdom."

But a mechanic and a housewife changed them, ensuring for them a more benign legacy that finally gets due recognition here, in a film that proves, in elegant defiance of Chekov's Gun, that sometimes the most dramatic story is of the bomb that doesn't go off."

Young compared Guardians and Oppenheimer as well, but pointed out that the film about Mathé's accomplishment was "long overdue" and dubbed it "fundamentally a tribute to maverick Gallic genius".