The China Syndrome

A television reporter and her cameraman are filming a promotional piece at a nuclear plant when an incident occurs in the control room. The camera is running, and the footage is seized. The film takes the technical detail of the plant seriously and draws its tension not from an explosion but from nobody wanting to take responsibility. The network refusing to air the story is shown as part of the same order. James Bridges directed. Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas and Jack Lemmon lead, with Douglas also producing. Before watching: twelve days after it opened, a real nuclear accident occurred at Three Mile Island, and the coincidence permanently changed how the film is seen. The nuclear industry had attacked it as implausible from the start.