I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Blistering performances.

Meryl Streep stars as "Silkwood," a 1983 film directed by Mike Nichols and also starring Kurt Russell, Cher, Craig T. Nelson, Diana Scarwid, and Ron Silver.This is the true story of Karen Silkwood, a whistleblower at the plutonium processing plant at which she worked. Nearly everyone works for the plant, and when Karen volunteers to be part of the union's efforts to stay in the plant, she becomes a threat to everyone.After maintaining a union presence in the company, the union's next step is to negotiate a contract. Part of its work is investigating the safety features of the plant, which are woefully lacking. Karen herself is exposed to plutonium, and the question today is was it deliberate, as the levels were very high.Very good film, done in a very naturalistic style and showing not only the shabby way in which workers were treated, but the fact that most of them were lower class, working lots of hours under dangerous conditions. It's not a happy ending, as I guess most people know, and again, the question is, was Silkwood killed in an accident en route to meet with a New York Times reporter, or was it an arranged accident? And if she had documents, there were none at the scene.What's not shown in the film is that the plant eventually was shut down, and Silkwood's family sued and won a large settlement. This settlement was reduced, but then restored. Rather than appeal, the company paid a substantial amount of money but never admitted liability.Meryl Streep is fantastic as Silkwood, a hard worker, well-liked initially, who loved to laugh. She was courageous in the sense that she saw a wrong and wanted to do her part to right it without a lot of fanfare. Like everyone in the film, there is no artifice to Streep's portrayal. It's all done in a very natural style, and that includes the sound, which is not overamplified. Cher is wonderful as her lesbian friend Dolly, and Kurt Russell effective as her boyfriend.There were several films like this in the '80s and '90s - Norma Rae was one, and even though it's not about workers, The China Syndrome is another as it deals with dangerous conditions in a nuclear plant. Later there was A Civil Action, The Firm, Afterburn, The Insider, Erin Brokovich. Silkwood was an important movie with an important message, and it undoubtedly served as inspiration for the films that followed it.

Karen, a low-income science loving woman from Texas, lives with her two co-workers: Dolly (played by Cher), who is a lesbian and Karen's best friend, and Drew, Karen's easy-living boyfriend. All three of them work for the Kerr-McGee corporation, along with several employees: Winston - a pervert and the nervous new guy Hurley - the foreman and Karen's boss/ sort of friend Gilda - Karen's friend in their station Velma - a mother of several kids, including a daughter with cancer Wesley - an obnoxious worker but nice guy When Karen learns of illegal photo tampering, unsanitary workplace conditions, shifty workers and hidden evidence, she goes undercover, and everyone eventually leaves her side, except for Dolly. Eventually Karen's home is contaminated and ripped apart by men in HAZMAT suits, and she gets mad at Hurley when he accuses her of contaminating her own home. After being internally contaminated by plutonium, Karen begins to lose her sanity, and gets killed in a mysterious car crash.It was fairly accurate, the acting wasn't too cheesy, and the movie was funny as well as dramatic. One actor who did really well was the one who played Winston. I'd rate it 10/10, except it seemed that Karen worked so hard, only to be murdered in a ditch. Granted, it is based on true events, but it just seemed a lousy way to end the chance of Karen avenging her co-workers. Overall, it's definitely worth watching. It has some great shots of Texas oil refineries and chemical factories, it's got lots of action, and it makes a significant point.

This is a review of "Silkwood" and "Norma Rae", two of the more famous "women's pictures" of the 1980s. The better of the two, "Norma Rae" stars Sally Field as Norma Rae, a textile worker in small town North Carolina. Director Martin Ritt delves into Norma's social and home life, highlights the exploitation of both Norma and her fellow workers, and then introduces Norma to a Jewish unionist played by Ron Leibman. Ron teaches Norma the importance of solidarity, worker rights and battling for betterment. Sally, meanwhile, reveals herself to be a headstrong, blue-collar warrior; the brawn behind Leibman's brains.While "Norma Rae" does trivialise (it champions a "fairer capitalism", rather than examine the contradictions of capitalism itself), it does contain a number of good passages, most of which either compare Ron and Norma's differing social backgrounds or show the textile bosses strategically promoting dissenters and so pitting workers against workers. John Alonzo's cinematography is pitch perfect, gritty, intimate and pseudo-documentarian.Some have complained that "Norma Rae" is uncritical of unions, that the film neglects to mention that Norma's textile plant promptly shut down, and then go so far as to suggest that "unions are bad" because they "end jobs" and "chase jobs offshore". We see similar arguments today, banks, and the financial sector as a whole, which proclaim themselves as being "indespensible", threatening to pack up and leave countries if taxes are raised or stricter measures are put in place. Such things are typically used as "proof" for the benefits of less regulation. In reality, it's tantamount to blackmail.Directed by Mike Nichols, "Silkwood", another blue-collar whistle-blower picture, stars Meryl Streep as Karen Silkwood, a lowly worker at an Oklahoma nuclear facility. Along with her best friends (played by Kurt Russell and Cher), Karen begins to gather proof of her company's copious wrongdoings, which include poor safety measures, employee exploitation and radiation spills. Like "Norma Rae", the company bosses attempt to fight back, but can't seem to counter Karen's grit and determination. Both film's are overly sentimental, deal in very broad stereotypes (bad bosses, good exploited workers, saintly activists etc), but mask their deficiencies well with their low-key tones, naturalistic acting and strong, small town atmosphere. Their ancestors are King Vidor's "Our Daily Bread" and Michael Wilson's "Salt of the Earth". Their children are everything from "Matewan" to "North Country" to "Erin Brokovich" to "The Insider" to Ken Loach's underrated "Bread and Roses". The tale's familiar, and is habitually resuscitated every now and then.Unlike most films in this genre, "Silkwood's" hero is actively stalked, hounded and murdered by the shadowy corporations she locks horns with. In real life, the nuclear facility at which Karen worked (Kerr-McGee) was rumoured to have strong ties to the US Government, the CIA and the NIA. As Karen was about to whistle-blow on the illegal sale of nuclear grade plutonium, some believe she was assassinated. In the 1970s, women like her spearheaded the anti-nuclear movement, which has been successful in stopping the construction of nuclear plants, which even today are constantly being offered as "clean", "carbon free", "reliable energy sources".8/10 - Overrated, simplistic, but well acted. Worth one viewing. See "Bread and Roses".

Silkwood is one of those movies that you simply should not watch at midnight. Unfortunately, my cable television placed the movie at the 12:30 am slot and on top of it kept no intermissions, not even one during the movie. So I had to stay awake late at night and watch this in the living area, dimming the lights around me and lowering the T.V.'s audibility so that my family would not get disturbed by the warning alarm sounds heard often in the film. Without any intermissions, I was a little lost during the movie because keeping an intermission during films does indeed have a powerful impact if placed at the right point – it increases the audience's anticipation and also gives them a break to take in all the details.Silkwood kept chugging on and on in scenes with little dramatic weight (its documentary approach is quite like the lead actress Meryl Streep's other film A Cry in The Dark) or any significant narrative development to hold us in. I quite felt like the movie chose the wrong person to tell its story, and it could've been told better had Karen Silkwood been a supporting character in a film that rather emphasized on the investigation of Kerr-McGee plant and the lawsuit in the aftermath of Silkwood's untimely demise. Unlike Erin Brockovich, Silkwood was not able to directly resolve the issue of health and safety of workers, and though she did play a major role in initiating the whole move, her accident martyrs her for a greater cause. The movie isn't able to deliver her enough justice for her efforts and death, with its epilogue only mentioning that the 'plant closed down a year later' – too grim and defeated to inspire. Karen Silkwood was a courageous small-town gal who took on the Oklahoma nuclear plant where she worked after finding out that it conducted unethical practices without considering workers' safety. From being one of the bubbliest and most beloved persons among her colleagues and supervisors, Karen eventually lost almost everyone's support after helping the union in digging out such malpractices happening at the workplace. Her private life too faced its share of difficulties on top of the mess she was already in even before the incident – apart from losing custody of her three kids, Silkwood's relationship with her boyfriend Drew also suffered when he cautioned her of 'going too far' with the case. She didn't just have to win her colleagues' support but also prove to the union that she was a smart woman with a sharp mind.In one of the film's best acted scenes, Meryl as Karen is discussing recommendations and proposals for the nuclear plant with the senior union members. At first, her suggestions are trivial and her seniors condescendingly put down her ideas and hurriedly begin to leave. It is then that Karen leaves the room and catches them in the corridor where she whispers what she had witnessed at the plant. It is only then that the union takes her seriously. Streep's excellence is evident during close-ups or mid-shots in this movie's case (the film rarely has close- ups), but her screen charisma tends to disappear in her attempt to replicate human-like performances. And this becomes a problem whenever the camera goes away from her, especially here in Silkwood where the cinematography is quite conventional like those old films where the cameras moved less and the actors went back and forth. She's managed to rectify this problem though especially in her recent ventures where her charisma makes for half the performance. Here we manage to catch less than half of whatever she is doing because of the distance the camera maintains.It's not just Streep but also actors Cher, Kurt and director Mike Nichols who act and direct respectively in a similar manner. Now I get it they wanted to depict a dull small-town in Oklahoma with as much truism as possible. Cher (playing Karen's lesbian friend Dolly) wears the most unimposing crumpled and faded jerseys and pants while Russell (playing Karen's boyfriend Drew) is equally untidy and moves around the house shirtless and in cheap blue jeans (though their performances are great). They do everything in their own lazy pace and Cher's Dolly is found half the time either in bed or on the couch. On top of this Nichols makes it even more evident that nothing much happens in 'small town Okie' by placing his camera at a distance. Only a few times do we get shot/reverse shots between the actors and once or twice we see the camera do an effect other than cutting (a few dissolves and an expected fadeout after the crucial scene). Even the upbeat background music at the beginning slowly turns into bleak mournful tunes as the film progresses. It is only the sound of the warning alarm bells that occasionally appear to raise some momentum. There is neither enough follow-up of Silkwood's investigation itself, except for some extended scenes of Karen surreptitiously (hence very slowly) hunting for some 'confidential information'. I could get up in between, bring some chocolates from the fridge in the kitchen and find myself watching her do the same action. The movie 'Silkwood' therefore becomes 'ambitionless' and although I do understand it has deliberately downplayed its 'own cinematic ambition' just to honor the woman's life, the movie as a result also becomes 'one of those inspirational films that come, snag some awards and are soon forgotten'. Or in this film's case, used as a failed 'boob-gag' in Seth MacFarlane's unimpressive Oscar show.