The China Syndrome (1979)

While doing a generic news story at a nuclear power plant, a TV reporter (Jane Fonda) and her cameraman (Michael Douglas) find themselves in the middle of an emergency shutdown when the reactor malfunctions. Although a crisis is averted, the shift supervisor (Jack Lemmon) suspects the pumps are faulty and does some investigating of his own. Can the truth get out there before it's covered up? Directed by James Bridges (THE PAPER CHASE), this is one of those perfect examples of the political thriller. Instead of doing a melodramatic message movie lecturing us on the potential evils of nuclear power, the film makers concoct an intense narrative of secrets and lies and corporate cover up and a race against time to get the truth out before it's nipped in the bud. The plot may have been deemed far fetched and poo pooed as liberal paranoia on the part of the anti-nuke crowd  but almost two weeks after the film opened, life imitated art at the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania. That shut the naysayers up! Politics aside, this is a first rate piece of muckraking cinema with a superb (one of his best) performance by Lemmon. Fonda's role is poorly written but she does wonders with it anyway and there's not much Douglas can do with his hot headed camera man but go through the motions. Bridges keeps it tight and edgy, punching away till the very end. With Scott Brady, Wilford Brimley, Peter Donat, James Hampton and James Karen.