Review: The China Syndrome

TV reporter Jane Fonda and long-haired freelance cameraman Michael Douglas stumble upon one helluva story when the nuclear plant they’re doing a routine puff piece on suddenly appears to have a near-problematic incident. And by that I mean that a nuclear meltdown was narrowly avoided by some risky but quick thinking from veteran plant supervisor Jack Lemmon. The TV network fearing a lawsuit sees Fonda’s station unable to use the footage they captured of the incident. And yet the powers that be insist that there was no risk of any harm whatsoever, it was just a minor hiccup, apparently. Cover-up, anyone? Fonda tries to get Lemmon to talk after tracking him down in a bar, and at first he is reluctant to speak. But some digging of his own gives him a sudden burst of conscience, and he decides he wants to do something about the situation before it gets even worse. Peter Donat and James Karen play Fonda’s superiors, whilst Richard Herd and Scott Brady are the plant higher-ups trying to cover things up and protect the bottom line. James Hampton is the plant’s PR stooge, and Wilford Brimley plays the plant employee who is reluctant to rock the boat and risk his pay check.

 

In one of the strangest and most unnervingly prescient examples of life imitating art, the situation depicted in this 1979 film from director/co-writer James Bridges (“The Paper Chase”) was followed just 12 days after its theatrical release by a similar real-life nuclear incident in Pennsylvania. So in historical terms, it’s an extremely important film (though for full disclosure, there was at least one nuclear incident that occurred prior to the film being made as well, and subsequently, nuclear energy has become quite common in several countries, not seen quite as negatively today).

 

As for the film’s merits as cinema, it’s a terrific yarn well-told by Bridges in very matter-of-fact, almost docudrama fashion. In 2014 it still holds up extremely well, all things considered. It seems to have been a little bit forgotten about over the years, but given what happened after its release, I personally think it’s still an important film. We need to learn from our mistakes, and not scoff at the seeming impossibility of such things ever happening in real-life, because they bloody well did end up happening here. Today the relevant subject matter might be something different, but the message is still the same.

 

We get off to a mixed bag start, with an hilarious singing telegram news story, funny because the set-up suggests a more hard-hitting piece of investigative reporting. But we also get a truly awful opening song by Stephen Bishop, trying to be Christopher Cross or Bob Seger. He’s decidedly neither, and the fact that his awful number was chosen over the originally intended song by a band of nobodies called The Doobie Brothers (an unknown number called ‘What a Fool Believes’. You’ve never heard of it. I mean, it’s not like it’s their best-known hit or anything…), boggles my mind. I don’t care if the song didn’t fit the subject, producers were on the wrong side of prescience in at least this one instance. The Doobie Brothers have become and have stayed somewhat relevant, whilst Bishop never even was (Oh come on, you don’t remember the song he did for “Tootsie” any more than I do). However, once the story kicks in, this is really compelling stuff, and the lack of an actual music score helps with the near docudrama stylings of the film (You can see moments where a score would’ve kicked in and the film is all the better for avoiding one). In some ways it reminds me of “All the President’s Men” except with TV and nuclear energy as its subjects, not print journalism and political scandal.

 

The performances are absolutely top-notch all-round here, the film wouldn’t be half as tense without caring for these characters and their situation. The actors, therefore, are deserving of some of the credit. In one of her best roles, Jane Fonda is perfectly cast here as the fluff reporter looking for real journalistic endeavours. I think she was born to play this character. Michael Douglas produced the film, so it’s hilarious that he’s the one guy in the film who pronounces nuclear as ‘nucular’ several decades before George Dubya Bush. However, he’s great fun here as the cynical, sometimes pissed off, smart-arse freelance cameraman.

 

For me, though, the two most memorable turns come from Wilford Brimley and an Oscar-nominated Jack Lemmon. Brimley doesn’t get a whole lot of screen time, but he has the saddest, and perhaps most troubling role in the film. This guy is in no real position to speak out and make waves, he has a job he wants to keep, mouths to feed, and probably isn’t the most PR savvy guy in the world. You’ll feel sorry for this guy, he’s a pretty relatable blue-collar kinda guy in a tough spot. Lemmon proves here as he did several times throughout his career (especially in “The Days of Wine and Roses”, “Glengarry Glen Ross”, and the underrated “Dad”) that he wasn’t just a light comedian and movie star, but a seriously talented and versatile actor. Here he has the most crucial role in the film, he’s the character who undergoes a real change, gradually suspecting that there may indeed be a problem at this plant. Like Brimley he has a lot of pressure on him to shut the hell up, but unlike Brimley, he’s a little higher up the authority chain and might just be able to do something here before the situation gets even worse. Look out for a perfectly cast James Hampton, a most underused and underrated character actor who plays the plant’s PR hack.

 

The film isn’t flawless, in fact the film’s understated, matter-of-fact approach is unfortunately broken in one unwise scene that is dumb and over-the-top. Involving Douglas’ fellow cameraman (and the token minority in the film, I might add), you’ll know it when you see it because it’s the only inauthentic moment in the entire film.

 

The brightest spot in James Bridges’ underwhelming directorial career (Are you seriously going to champion the merits of the dreadful “Urban Cowboy”?), this efficient and very effective nuclear disaster drama is one of the best environmental message movies you’ll ever see, hell it’s probably top of the heap. Bridges wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay with Mike Gray (Chuck Norris’ “Code of Silence”, of all films) and T.S. Cook (whose other credits are mostly TV movies of little note).

 

Rating: B+