[.ca] China Syndrome

From Amazon.co.uk:
James Bridges (Urban Cowboy, Bright Lights, Big City) directed this 1979 film that became a worldwide sensation when, just weeks after its release, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred. Jane Fonda (Klute, Julia) plays a television news reporter who is not taken very seriously until a routine story at the local nuclear power plant leads her to what may be a cover-up of epic proportions. She and her cameraman, played by Michael Douglas (Wall Street, American President), hook up with a whistleblower at the plant, played by Jack Lemmon (Save the Tiger, Missing). Together they try to uncover the dangers lurking beneath the nuclear reactor and avoid being silenced by the business interests behind the plant. Though topical, The China Syndrome (produced by Douglas) works on its own as a socially conscious thriller that entertains even as it spurs its audience to think. --Robert Lane

Amazon.com Essential Video:
James Bridges (Urban Cowboy, Bright Lights, Big City) directed this 1979 film that became a worldwide sensation when, just weeks after its release, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred. Jane Fonda (Klute, Julia) plays a television news reporter who is not taken very seriously until a routine story at the local nuclear power plant leads her to what may be a cover-up of epic proportions. She and her cameraman, played by Michael Douglas (Wall Street, American President), hook up with a whistleblower at the plant, played by Jack Lemmon (Save the Tiger, Missing). Together they try to uncover the dangers lurking beneath the nuclear reactor and avoid being silenced by the business interests behind the plant. Though topical, the film (produced by Douglas) works on its own as a socially conscious thriller that entertains even as it spurs its audience to think. --Robert Lane

Toxic film:
The acting was bad and the science was bad. If it weren't that Three Mile Island happened around that time, the film would have been an utter flop. Don't waste your time with this toxic lie.

Three Mile Island: A Warning:
This movie came out a year before the incident at Three Mile Island but it is freakishly alike. A news-reporter is making an item at a nuclear power plant and sees an incident happening right before her eyes. The camerman (Michael Douglas) tapes it all and gives to tape to the anti-nuclear people. First the corperation does not want to come out and says nothing has happened. One of the people working at the plant (Jack Lemmon) get regrets and wants to come out. The movie has it's highpoint in the end, in the contral room of the plant... It is a very important movie to show to people the dangers of nuclear power plants and especially the role of human error. Still topical after 25 years, a must-see

Not For The Young Generation...:
I see that people of the 70s appreciate the social impact of the film, more than those of us who are a part of the younger generation. I, in fact, as a young man, who hasn't lived during the years of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents, did not pay that much close attention to the people's fright against nuclear reactions. From younger perspective, I believe that the 'Chine Syndrome' hasn't got much to offer to the younger audience, as far as suspence, tension, and storyboard is concerned. The film is about the collaboration of a reporter (Jane Fonda) with a director in the nuclear power plant against the running of the plant, after a dangerous event that could have harmed hundreds of thousands of people by radioactive means. Although it seems to start interestingly enough, the tension does not develop at equal rate. One expects a huge or at least somewhat bigger event to happen; but instead gets an unreasonable exaggeration of the initial event, which just does not satisfy the audience. Michael Douglas plays the cameraman who works with Fonda in shooting reportages. He is the one who gets suspicious of the seemingly perfect control down in the plant, and plays a major role in the investigation of the plant. The movie is not bad; but it doesn't carry forward how it starts. That creates a disappointment. And as I mentioned, one cannot appreciate the social impact truely, if he/she hasn't lived during the years of nuclear danger. Good acting, but a little insatisfactory story for the young ones...

A lesson in corporate greed.:
The 70's were known for a string of disaster movies, like Earthquake, Airport and The Towering Inferno. The script for The China Syndrome could have easily followed that theme and laid waste to a large part of California (an event some of you reviewers were hoping for!) but it manages to avert disaster while teaching all of us several important lessons. Primarily, it shows us how corporate greed and meddling can not only side-step government regulations in the interest of profit, but also put a substantial percentage of our population at great risk. As the plot goes, PG & E (Pacific Gas & Electric) has been running the Ventana Nuclear Power Plant for a short time, and is looking to add additional plants in their operating area. They are about to break ground on a second nuclear plant and wish to put the public at ease with the idea of nuclear power as a viable source of energy by allowing a T.V. news crew (played by Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas and another fellow) to tour the Ventana plant. While in the visitors booth, in full view of the plant's control room, the news crew witness an emergency that causes the reactor to "scram", subsequently shutting down the plant. Without authorization, Douglas captures the entire event on film. When the drama subsides, PG & E's media suit gives the news crew a watered-down explanation for what just happened. Fonda, with her first piece of "hard news", hopes to air the story immediately, but is stone-walled by the news station's management. It soon becomes clear that PG & E has gotten word of the film's existence and successfully stops it's airing on television. Shortly thereafter, Douglas steals the film from the station's film vault and secretly shows it to a couple of renouned physicists. What he finds out is very chilling, indeed. Jack Lemmon plays the Shift Supervisor at Ventana, coming off excellently as a loyal, dedicated company man, who must balance his feelings for his beloved plant, with his growing concern that the plant may not be safe to operate. Digging deeper, he discovers significant evidence that PG & E and its sub-contractors have by-passed safety regulations in the construction of the plant. When he presents this evidence before his superiors, he is amazed to find out that they only care about getting the plant up-and-running again to make money. The rest of the movie you will have to see for yourself. It exposes the reality of corporate greed and fraud. It gives you a sense of what a whistle-blower in today's world might go through to get their story out. Some companies are killing us and we don't even know it. For example, PG & E (a real company, for those of you who didn't know) recently settled a class-action law suit for contaminating ground water, it's employees and nearby residents with carcinogins. It made many people sick and some died. Many more will die from the long-term effects of expose. You may remember the movie that was inspired by the story: Erin Brokovich. I was about 12yrs old when The China Syndrome came out. It's just as scary to me now as it was then. I also understand why some of today's youth don't see it that way. Most movies today require extreme graphics and violence to get their message out to an audience. The China Syndrome will seem a little dry to some. If another event, like Three-mile Island or Chernobyl occurs, and it will, then this movie will make more sense to them. It's not the nuclear energy I fear; It's the people who profit from it who scare me.

A Thriller That Has Not Dated:
THE CHINA SYNDROME is one of those rare films that has more than just highly competent acting, scripting, and directing going for it. Current events also pops up from time to time to remind us that the events on the screen fit only too carefully into the jigsaw puzzle of art imitiating life. Just a few weeks after this nuclear power plant disaster film was released, a real life and similar catastrophe happened at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. And then a decade later, a colossal meltdown at the Russian nuclear facility at Chernobyl again served as warning that if fallible human beings are permitted to design and run nuclear power plants, then the events of THE CHINA SYNDROME are just waiting to happen. Director James Bridges pictures the fictional Ventana nuclear facility as an inevitable calamity to be. Jack Lemmon is shift supervisor Jack Godell, a man who is dedicated to the safety of the people of California. At first, he staunchly defends the integrity of his bosses who warn him that this plant must go online on time. Soon enough, with the help of television reporter Kimberly Wells, (Jane Fonda) and cameraman Richard Adams, (Michael Douglas) Godell discovers that safety has taken second place to corporate greed and the Almighty Buck. These three are horrified that the plant came THISCLOSE to an accident that might have poisoned the entire state for centuries. The final thirty minutes is a lesson to current directors about how to generate and maintain suspense and audience involvement without gratuitous sex or violence. Lemmon has never been better. Even his later Oscar for SAVE THE TIGER takes a back seat here. Fonda does well as she sets up the pace with a live interview with Lemmon that shows him both tongue tied and exasperated. In the hands of a lesser director, Lemmon might have sounded supremely confident and glib. Lemmon's inability to articulate was itself a tribute to his skill to communicate effectively even when he seemed not to. The closing moments of THE CHINA SYNDROME suggest that all that separates humanity from unimaginable disaster is the courage and wisdom of good company men like Jack Godell, who want only to be allowed to do their job without a board of directors pushing dollars over lives. During the twenty five years following the release of this film, repeated viewings have forced us to view its events under the constantly changing perspective of world events which ironically enough focus on terrorism as the cause of the next disaster. This film simply should not be missed.