The China Syndrome (1979)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

James Bridges

Writers:

Mike Gray (written by) &
T.S. Cook (written by) ...

Release Date:

16 March 1979 (USA)

Genre:

Thriller | Drama

Tagline:

Today, only a handful of people know what it means... Soon you will know.

Plot:

A reporter finds what appears to be a cover-up of safety hazards at a nuclear power plant.

Plot Keywords:

Nuclear Power | Reporter | Cameraman | News | Cover Up

Awards:

Nominated for 4 Oscars. Another 6 wins & 13 nominations

Cast

Jane Fonda	...	Kimberly Wells
Jack Lemmon	...	Jack Godell
Michael Douglas	...	Richard Adams
Scott Brady	...	Herman De Young
James Hampton	...	Bill Gibson
Peter Donat	...	Don Jacovich
Wilford Brimley	...	Ted Spindler
Richard Herd	...	Evan Mc Cormack
Daniel Valdez	...	Hector Salas
Stan Bohrman	...	Pete Martin
James Karen	...	Mac Churchill
Michael Alaimo	...	Greg Minor
Donald Hotton	...	Dr. Elliott Lowell
Khalilah Ali	...	Marge
Paul Larson	...	D.B. Royce

Also Known As:

Le syndrome chinois (Canada: French title) (France) [fr]
A Síndrome da China (Brazil) [pt]
China Syndrome (Japan: English title) [en]
Chinski syndrom (Poland) [pl]
Dünyanin kaderi (Turkey: Turkish title) [tr]
Das China-Syndrom (West Germany) [de]
El síndrome de China (Spain) [es]
Ha-Syndrome Ha-Sini (Israel: Hebrew title) [iw]
Kína szindróma (Hungary) [hu]
Kiina-ilmiö (Finland) [fi]
Kina-syndromet (Sweden) [sv]
Kina-syndromet (Denmark) [da]
O Síndroma da China (Portugal) [pt]
Síndrome da China (Brazil) [pt]
Sindrome cinese (Italy) [it]
To syndromo tis Kinas (Greece) [el]

Runtime:

122 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:PG | Australia:PG | Argentina:13 | Chile:14 | Finland:K-12 | Norway:12 (original rating) | Norway:15 (re-rating) | Sweden:11 | USA:PG | West Germany:12 | Singapore:PG | Netherlands:AL

Filming Locations:

1000 N. Crescent Drive, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

IPC Films

Trivia:

All of the music in the film, including the title song "Somewhere In Between" by Stephen Bishop, comes from normal sources of music within the film: car radios, barroom jukeboxes, television commercials, etc. There is no traditional "soundtrack" of music that the audience can hear but the characters cannot.

Goofs:

Continuity: When meeting about what to do with the film the next day, a paper leans against Rich's coffee cup, but is gone a moment later.

Quotes:

Ted Spindler: He was not a loony. He was the sanest man I ever knew in my life.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Men in Black II (2002)

Soundtrack:

Somewhere in Between

Press Censored even in 1979

AS poor and as distorted as the news in the U.S. is today, I find it refreshing that there were cover-ups and 'arrangements' being made over nuclear plants even in the 70's. Having worked on the software for control systems that theoretically control the nuclear plants, I know that any day now, the 'holes in the Swiss cheese slices' will all line up, and boom!!!! No one is taking the time to provide the care in that software that is continually being 'improved' and building like a house of cards. Safety software engineers are paid NOT to care about the quality of the work, but to rubber stamp the specs.

The inspectors they showed there are today even more incompetent and apathetic. As long as they find a few cosmetic problems to bitch about (e.g., coffee cups hiding alarm buttons), they don't peer any further. And of course, they wouldn't examine the X-rays, or know what they were looking for, if they did. The fox is guarding the henhouse in many areas in which we foolishly think we are protected. This movie attempts to unveil that danger, something movies are no longer allowed to do, since they are made by the same Big Business conglomerates that give you the nuclear plants, the Keystone tires, the Ford roll-overs.

Jane Fonda does a fantastic job of playing the innocent ingenue, something that hard-brained tough lady isn't in real life. And of course, Jack Lennon, dear departed, did one fantastic job as the ill-fated conscience of the nuclear plant. Check this one out of the video store....before all the copies are ordered destroyed. (I'm kidding, but not by much.)

Collusion between the information distorters and dispensers AND Big Business is just one of the themes in this movie, but something that's much more prevalent now than then. Well-written, I want to now see, "The Making of the China Syndrome" to find out what was cut out of it, and how much pressure the makers of this movie were under.

Just one thing: The movie Cher was in, in which she's run off the road, was also about a nuclear plant, and a worker who knows the truth about the apathy to safety at high levels of the plant. Which one copied the other?