Saturday, March 5, 2016

THE CHINA SYNDROME

Saturday matinee viewing. Been an age since I watched this 1979 movie from James Bridges all the way through. It's a pretty taut and nicely constructed conspiracy/thriller which also dances on the outskirts of the disaster genre so popular that decade. Great performances from Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon (both Oscar-nominated) and Michael Douglas (who also produced). Fonda's role, as TV newswoman who investigates the cover-up of a near-disaster at a nuclear power plant in California, certainly suited the actress during her years of political activism, and the film received a huge profile boost being released only a week before the infamous near-nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Some parallels to the mysterious 1974 death of nuclear facility health activist Karen Silkwood can be seen in the screenplay (in fact, this and Mike Nichols' 1983 film Silkwood would make a great double-bill).