An Exercise In Nonsense

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a series dealing with influential and important films that altered history - there aren't a lot of those, but one that definitely fits the category is "The China Syndrome." Having been in the theater after the Harrisburg meltdown and hearing one of the characters in this film say Pennsylvania could be wiped out, I was very interested to see this program. For anyone who was around in 1979, "The China Syndrome," coming as it did just as a nuclear reactor actually did have an accident, was a major event and sparked a lot of debate. Before the film, Americans were 60/40 in favor of nuclear power plants; after the movie, the poll reversed. As the narrator says at the end of the documentary, if not for the film and the fact that it was backed up in real life, we would today have 1,000 nuclear reactors in this country instead of 100. One of the people interviewed commented on the effect that might have had on 9/11. Think about that.