The China Syndrome ***** (1979, Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas) – Classic Movie Review 900

Jack Lemmon stars as Jack Godell, a nuclear power plant controller who finds a dangerous fault in the plant that the authorities will do anything to keep from the media, in co-writer/director James Bridges’s riveting 1979 couldn’t-be-more-topical thriller. Jane Fonda co-stars as Kimberly Wells, a feisty reporter who witnesses an accident at the nuclear power plant and seeks to leak the incident to TV, but finds herself embroiled in a plot to suppress the whole nature of the incident.

Unusually for a mainstream Hollywood movie, the film triumphs simultaneously on two fronts, both as nail-biting, edge-of-seat entertainment and a vitally relevant message movie. And it proves one of Lemmon’s finest acting opportunities. In a performance of great anguish, subtlety and urgency, he effortlessly proves his brilliance outside comedy.

He is loyally backed up throughout by an on-form Fonda as the go-getting, ultra- ambitious TV newswoman and a young, bearded, chubby Michael Douglas as the TV cameraman Richard Adams, who both swing behind Lemmon to blow the whistle after they just happen to be at his plant on a general story when the near meltdown takes place.

Just after its premiere, the film became even more topical than the makers anticipated when the event was replicated in real life in the Three Mile Island nuclear fault. Douglas also produced. Mike Gray and T S Cook collaborated with Bridges on the outstanding screenplay.

Nominated for four Oscars (Best Actor Lemmon, Best Actress Fonda, screenplay, art direction/set decoration), it failed to win any. Odd, that, huh? It kind of makes you believe in conspiracy theories, doesn’t it?

Lemmon didn’t win an Oscar for Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), Days of Wine and Roses (1962) or Missing either, though he probably deserved to, and was nominated each time. They remain among his best, most enduring films. He did win for Mister Roberts (1955) and Save the Tiger (1973) however.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 900 derekwinnert.com