Rating: 
Summary: A terrible warning!
Review:
The possible consequences and risk involved when the Pandora box is open. An anticipatory film just before Long Island and Chernobyl explores a probability that eventually can become in a reality.
Memorable performances of all the cast Fonda and Lemmon are outstanding. Very credible script with high caliber tension.
Rating:
Summary: Quite Possibly The Best Film Of The Decade......
Review: A funny thing about this excellent motion picture experience......I must have watched this film 3 or 4 times before realizing that there was absolutely no music in it whatsoever! (Except for Stephen Bishop's "Somewhere In Between", played as the titles roll.) Now that, I believe, is a real tribute to the story and the acting in this film. It doesn't require ANY music. Jack Lemmon was never better than in this role as a scared-stiff nuclear power plant worker. He is simply riveting in this! Hard to whine about the price on this one, either. --10 Stars!--
Rating:
Summary: RADIANT PRESENTS
Review: Brooks directs a powerhouse cast in a mixture of real headlines, and real fiction. As this film was being released theatrically, a meltdown occurred at THREE MILE ISLAND NUCLEAR POWER DISTRIBUTION FACILITY near Harrissburg, PA. Just a LOVE CANAL away from the real site! As characters in the film decried, "...an area the size of Pennsylvania...will be uninhabitable for thousands of years...", people were already leaving te real life site because they feared the area would be uninhabitable for thousands of years! Car chases and threats ensue, but vigilante journalists manage to document enough to affect real-life legislation (CLEAN BILL ACT, Re.) An unforgettable fossil that betrays the future of man. Exciting, and delightfully hyper-vigilante at times. ODD FOOTNOTE: Theatrical presentation included a pro nuclear energy ad that belittled proponents of Solar Power, ("Hey we can go solar now man"!). I thouht this to be distasteful, imperial, and cheap. Rather frightening entertainment for its time! On the other hand, at least we could inhale in theaters those days!
Rating:
Summary: Great Film!
Review: I have always loved this movie! I originaly owned it on VHS, and just recently bought it on DVD. I wish they could have included more extras (interviews, documentaries, etc...), but it doesn't matter. This movie is still suspenseful 24 years later! It's also amazing that, apart from the beginning credits, the movie has no music soundtrack! The actors and the script, successfully carry the whole movie. If you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend it!
Rating: 
Summary: Not For The Young Generation...
Review: I see that people of the 70s appreciate the social impact of the film, more than those of us who are a part of the younger generation. I, in fact, as a young man, who hasn't lived during the years of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents, did not pay that much close attention to the people's fright against nuclear reactions. From younger perspective, I believe that the 'Chine Syndrome' hasn't got much to offer to the younger audience, as far as suspence, tension, and storyboard is concerned.The film is about the collaboration of a reporter (Jane Fonda) with a director in the nuclear power plant against the running of the plant, after a dangerous event that could have harmed hundreds of thousands of people by radioactive means. Although it seems to start interestingly enough, the tension does not develop at equal rate. One expects a huge or at least somewhat bigger event to happen; but instead gets an unreasonable exaggeration of the initial event, which just does not satisfy the audience. Michael Douglas plays the cameraman who works with Fonda in shooting reportages. He is the one who gets suspicious of the seemingly perfect control down in the plant, and plays a major role in the investigation of the plant. The movie is not bad; but it doesn't carry forward how it starts. That creates a disappointment. And as I mentioned, one cannot appreciate the social impact truely, if he/she hasn't lived during the years of nuclear danger. Good acting, but a little insatisfactory story for the young ones...
Rating: 
Summary: Great topic, if a little dated (just a smidge, really!)
Review: I watched this movie a few days ago, and then felt compelled to watch it again today. It just seems so . . . possible is the word. Though I'm not a Jane Fonda fan (although I applaud her for her performance in 'Klute'), I found her character to be believable and entertaining. The movie itself does reflect the Cold War nuclear culture that many of us grew up in. A child born near the time of the 3-Mile Island incident, I really don't recall it having an impact on my life. But this movie today seems like a time capsule, almost REAL in the essence of the late 1970's that it brings to the screen (the suburban California neiborhoods, the plastic furniture, even the sounds of a VERY retro Taco Bell commercial that Lemmon is listening to while watching TV). Of course, compared to the nuclear threats we face today, this movie seems all too simple, but then again the greatest disasters of our times have been simple in nature and design. The end is a nail biter, but it does let you down softly. A pity, too, as I could truly see a 'Fail-Safe' apocalyptic scene coming. Nonetheless, this is a riveting film that I highly recomend.
Rating:
Summary: Ignorance is not Bliss¿
Review: I'm not about to make a speech on what was technically right or wrong in this movie (if you want to read something like that see some of the 1 star comments dealing with platform shoes). All I can say is the movie was great to watch, Jack Lemmon was at his very best, and that this movie was done to show that all the lies on how nuclear power is the greatest boon to mankind are for the most part dead wrong. As a side note, for nuclear techies, yes there are two types of systems, but never in the same plant. "duh!".
Rating:
Summary: Excellent thriller with social concerns...
Review: I've recently purchased "The China Syndrome" after viewing it for some time. Although I was younger than 5 when it was released in 1979, I'm really not in an authentic position to appreciate it's paralleled social impact during the Three Mile Island incident, but I do appreciate the social and technologiclal issues that it tries to explore, which still are valid today as it was in the late 70's. As an practicing engineer, I laud this film for its diligent look into the ethical and social dilemmas that Jack Adell (Lemmon) and the engineering community at large must contend with in order to create and utilize new technological concepts with an imperative responsibility to the public, even in lieu of corporate opposition. The potential hazards of nuclear power must never be shunned as a "casual inconvenience", as Lemmon's bosses seem to embrace after the plant's near-meltdown in order to salvage their attempt in obtaining a license from the NRC for a new plant. Hopefully, this film didn't tarnish America's attitude toward the nuclear industry as a whole. I almost decided to become a NUKE engr. myself, but the market just wasn't there. Twenty years later, "The China Syndrome" is a excellent contemporary drama/thriller with fine performances and underlying social messages.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent thriller with social concerns...
Review: I've recently purchased "The China Syndrome" after viewing it for some time. Although I was younger than 5 when it was released in 1979, I'm really not in an authentic position to appreciate it's paralleled social impact during the Three Mile Island incident, but I do appreciate the social and technologiclal issues that it tries to explore, which still are valid today as it was in the late 70's. As an practicing engineer, I laud this film for its diligent look into the ethical and social dilemmas that Jack Adell (Lemmon) and the engineering community at large must contend with in order to create and utilize new technological concepts with an imperative responsibility to the public, even in lieu of corporate opposition. The potential hazards of nuclear power must never be shunned as a "casual inconvenience", as Lemmon's bosses seem to embrace after the plant's near-meltdown in order to salvage their attempt in obtaining a license from the NRC for a new plant. Hopefully, this film didn't tarnish America's attitude toward the nuclear industry as a whole. I almost decided to become a NUKE engr. myself, but the market just wasn't there. Twenty years later, "The China Syndrome" is a excellent contemporary drama/thriller with fine performances and underlying social messages.
Rating:
Summary: Nuclear power isn't safe because humans aren't foolproof
Review: It doesn't surprise me that there are those who would trash this film because of its stars' obvious anti-nuke bias...even though incidents like Three Mile Island (which occurred only two weeks after the film's original release) and Chernobyl have proven otherwise. Nor does it deter me, however, from saying that this is a genuinely frightening thriller. Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas are a TV news crew who, while doing a special on alternate forms of energy, witness what appears to be a serious accident at a nuclear plant near Los Angeles. Though they witness the incident through a soundproof glass between them and the control room, Douglas secretly films it all. His and Fonda's efforts to have the footage aired, however, are rebuffed by the station's owners, who fear a massive lawsuit. It is thus up to Fonda and Douglas to find out the truth on their own. Meanwhile, even the plant's conscientious shift supervisor (Jack Lemmon) begins to have doubts about the plant's safety. Those fears are heightened when he learns that an all-important seal in the pump support structure shows a potentially fatal flaw and that some of the welding x-rays done on that same seal have been phonied. But Lemmon can't get anyone else at the plant to listen to him. The result is a nightmarish climax that poises on the brink of a meltdown. Director James Bridges deftly mixes political intrigue with technological and environmental fears in this gripping movie. Without stating it blatantly, he and coscreenwriters Mike Gray and T.S. Cook have underlined the basic reason for the anti-nuke bias displayed here. Fundamentally, nuclear power can NEVER be made 100% safe, no matter what anyone believes, because human beings can NEVER be 100% foolproof. The acting by Fonda, Douglas, and Lemmon is at its usual top-notch best, and the film never loses its focus on pondering the nightmarish consequences of such a thing as nuclear power, which we know as much about now as when the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshina--very little.
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