Fukushima 50 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Fukushima 50 Blu-ray Movie Review

Shin Godzilla was better.

Reviewed by Randy Miller III April 14, 2021

HBO's Chernobyl just set the bar too damn high. That's the elephant in the room during most -- if not all -- of Setsurō Wakamatsu's Fukushima 50, a low-budget dramatization of Japan's 2011 nuclear disaster which was, by all accounts, the second-worst in history besides for you-know-what. Despite its potentially gripping source material and the obvious uplifting human interest element, though, Fukushima 50 ends up being a dull and mostly uninspired affair that doesn't capture the raw scope or emotional impact of what it's trying to dutifully re-create. And while I'm not one to unfairly malign a film for its budget restrictions, good scripts and supporting characters don't have to cost much.

To its credit, Fukushima 50 at least gets the facts right. Triggered by the massive Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, disaster struck the Japanese nuclear power plant -- not so much the automatic shutdown of its four main reactors after the earthquake detection, but record-high waves that flooded the facility where its diesel backup generator was located. The resulting blackout knocked out cooling equipment that, if left unchecked, would lead to meltdowns and widespread radiation affecting the country for years, if not decades. Luckily, the heroic efforts of the "Fukushima 50" -- a nickname given to on-site workers remaining after the initial evacuation -- prevented immediate deaths from radiation exposure, although the disaster's long-term fallout has yet to be fully understood.

Not surprisingly, most of the film's cast is made of fictional stand-ins for the real-life Fukushima 50 and just about everyone else in the film, including the Izaki family who are evacuated and wait for news about patriarch Toshio (Koichi Sato), the station's shift supervisor. This element pretty much encompasses the film's "civilian life" side, as much of its drama stays either inside the weakened walls of Fukushima Daiichi or in various command centers, including that of site superintendent Masao Yoshida (Ken Watanabe) -- perhaps the only real person in the story. That's the other third of Fukushima 50: Yoshida's valiant attempts to defend his workers' emergency efforts against the government and other laymen, who seem bound and determined to insert themselves into almost every critical situation.

It's a familiar but decent template for this historical drama, but Fukushima plays almost all of its cards exactly wrong. The acting, save for its two well-known leads and maybe one or two supporting characters, is ridiculously over-the-top, full of unconvincing line deliveries and awful dialogue that involves lots of relayed information and repeated exposition. This even extends to on-screen text identifying anything and everything (example: a static shot of the diesel backup generator is paired with text literally stating diesel generator), which is often shown at inopportune moments, including in the middle of expository voice-over narration. The editing and camerawork is often distractingly bad. A few English-language scenes about America's political response and relief efforts is even worse. But Fukushima 50's fatal flaw is its lack of real human interest, with mostly interchangeable characters that you definitely won't remember the names of and thus care about at all. Although it rallies a little during the home stretch, there's not much in the way of a coda either -- we get a confusing time jump instead, focusing more on personal drama than real-world fallout.

MPI Media Group's Blu-ray package offers very good A/V specs but no solid bonus features -- a documentary or at least overview of the real-life disaster and its aftermath would have been more than welcome here.

Fukushima 50 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Despite Fukushima 50's low budget and poor camerawork during many scenes, its fundamental visual strengths are more than evident on MPI's Blu-ray, which offers a very pleasing 1080p transfer that suffers from few shortcomings. Both the brightly-lit control room of Fukushima Daiichi and other office-like interiors show excellent clarity and fine detail in close-ups and wide shots alike, with the former descending into intermittent darkness during several station-wide power outages. These moments are lit by either emergency panels or even just flashlights, with its digitally-shot image handling the shadows very well in all but the most overpoweringly dark moments. Very few compression artifacts or signs of banding could be spotted during select sequences but, by and large, it's a well-authored disc that features a full range of contrast levels, fairly deep shadows, and accurate color -- only one specific government group assembly featured an off-putting yellow-green tint, which did a few skin tones absolutely no favors (screenshot #12).

Fukushima 50 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Say what you will about the script (and I have), but the DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix is a solid effort that captures the film's largely grim atmosphere. Both the original Japanese and an English dub are included here; my preference fell towards the Japanese track, which is what I selected during my first watch of the film. Dialogue is cleanly recorded with occasionally strong musical support cues, especially during the coda, and the mix offers great use of channel separation and panning effects during the initial earthquake and tsunami. Overall, it's a fairly robust effort that easily exceeds the film's other shortcomings and, with few exceptions, really couldn't sound much better than it does here.

On a related note, the default English audio track is almost unbelievably bad, edging out its Japanese counterpart for awful dialogue and unintentionally hilarious line delivery. (Also, I wasn't expecting them to hire Ken Watanabe to dub over his own lines or anything, but it sounds really weird hearing someone else's voice when he's talking.) Either way, both are similar in overall sonic effectiveness during crucial moments, as well as dynamic range and volume levels.

Two sets of English subtitles are provided: one for Japanese dialogue translation, and full SDH subtitles for the dub. Unfortunately, both repeat the film's excessive on-screen text, which leads to a lot of clogged conversations.

Fukushima 50 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This one-disc release ships in a standard keepcase with deceptively great cover artwork and no inserts.

• Theatrical Trailer (2:04) - This promotional piece offers proof of why English dubs are usually a terrible idea. Check it out here, as well as this slightly better Japanese trailer (not included, unfortunately).

Fukushima 50 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Several years ago I remember strongly disliking the docudrama Deepwater Horizon; despite its visual strengths and relatable characters, it focused on human drama while completely ignoring the avoidable environmental disaster at its core. And while Setsurō Wakamatsu's Fukushima 50 clearly isn't as tasteless, that side of the story is glossed over during critical moments. (It's also fairly dull and poorly acted, so there's that.) All told, it's nowhere close to exceptional entertainment but MPI's Blu-ray at least offers a rock-solid A/V presentation. Shame about the lack of extras, though -- they could have possibly covered a lot of ground the film didn't. This one's a rental at most.