Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

The China Syndrome Blu-ray Movie Review

"The shudder... that damn shudder. The vibration I felt during the turbine trip. It bothered me."

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown December 30, 2024

The now famous, at-the-time infamous partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania occurred just twelve days after the 1979 theatrical release of The China Syndrome. Talk about prescience. But as Michael Reuben points out in his excellent review of director James Bridges' oft-forgotten thriller, there's more to the film than one might first assume. Journalism and its role in our daily lives is front and center, and its perhaps that timeliness -- which has yet to fade, even thirty-five years later -- that lends The China Syndrome serious staying power. How it isn't a movie more people aren't familiar with today is beyond me; I've been watching it in horror since childhood, and have yet to shake the fear of the kind of nightmare scenario it presents. It also begs the question: how many times has something like this happened? How often has a crisis been avoided, just without a film crew on site to reveal the events to the public? Eh, maybe I'm being paranoid. But it will certainly shake you up, and more than a bit.

"If the core is exposed for whatever reason, the fuel heats beyond core heat tolerance in a matter of minutes. Nothing can stop it. And it melts down right through the bottom of the plant, theoretically to China. But of course, as soon as it hits ground water, it blasts into the atmosphere and sends out clouds of radioactivity. The number of people killed would depend on which way the wind is blowing. Render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable, not to mention the cancer that would show up later."

Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) is a reporter for a local station in LA who has been hired to do "soft" news because of her pretty face. She aspires to do investigative journalism, but the station manager, Don Jacovich (Peter Donat), brushes her off. Her co-anchor, Pete Martin (played by real-life newsman Stan Bohrman), condescends to her on air. Her immediate boss, Mac Churchill (James Karen), won't support her. Kimberly's big break arrives by chance. While taping a "puff piece" special on energy in Southern California with her friend and former colleague, an independent cameraman named Richard Adams (Michael Douglas), Kimberly is given an official tour of the nuclear power plant at Ventana by a PR representative, Bill Gibson (James Hampton) from California Gas & Electric (CG&E). During the tour, however, an earthquake tremor trips the reactor's automatic shutdown procedure (known as a "SCRAM") and complications lead to a near-disaster that the operators narrowly avert. Richard secretly films the episode from a vantage point above the control room. He and Kimberly are certain they've witnessed a major incident, but they aren't sure what they've seen or what it means. Meanwhile, in the control room below, the shift supervisor, a former nuclear sub commander named Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon), and his friend and assistant, Ted Spindler (Wilford Brimley), are relieved to have avoided catastrophe. But Godell, a true believer in nuclear energy, remains uneasy. Like Scotty on the Enterprise, Godell knows the "feel" of his plant, and it feels wrong.

Click here to read the rest of Michael Reuben's review of the film, which he says "still holds up, thanks to first-rate performances, a well-crafted script and expert direction." He adds, "Jack Lemmon's performance as Godell is, to my mind, his finest dramatic film work, superior even to his Oscar-winning role in Save the Tiger."

The China Syndrome Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sandpiper Pictures' Blu-ray release of The China Syndrome appears to sport a similar 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer to Image Entertainment's 2015 edition, which traces its roots back to a master created by Sony. However, while the Image release is presented properly at 1.85:1, the Sandpiper version is framed a touch differently, at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. Not a big deal but worth noting all the same. Like the Image presentation, this transfer isn't exactly a showstopper, with persistent bouts of softness that aren't distracting per se but remain a letdown. There are also some compression anomalies sure to be spotted by eagle-eyed viewers, though banding and other issues are kept at bay. Otherwise, there isn't much to complain about. Color and contrast are pretty good, skin tones are a tad flushed on occasion but lifelike on the whole, black levels are deep and not prone to crush, detail ranges from average to quite striking, and delineation delivers. Grain is present as well, despite some inconsistencies that won't go unnoticed.

The China Syndrome Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sandpiper's DTS-HD Master Audio strikes me as identical to the 2015 Image Entertainment mix, of which Reuben writes, "The China Syndrome was released in mono, but the soundtrack was remixed for 5.1 for DVD. The 2004 "Special Edition" from Sony included the original mono track as an option, but the Blu-ray contains only the 5.1 remix, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. The remix is conservative and front-oriented, expanding the soundtrack across the front soundstage and adding resonance through the surrounds. The dynamic range is effectively broad, reaching the highs of the klaxons and alarms that are crucial to the impact of the reactor incidents and descending low enough to convey the rumbles of the heavy machinery in which Jack Lemmon's Godell suspects faults. A scene that cuts back and forth between a piece of machinery being tested, and Godell and his colleagues watching it on a monitor, provides a wonderful demonstration of the use of silence in sound editing."

The China Syndrome Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• A Fusion of Talent (SD, 28 minutes) - Key members of the cast and crew discuss multiple aspects of the production, including how the film was actually a mash-up of two separate projects, the first involving journalism and the second an accident at a nuclear facility.

• Creating a Controversy (SD, 30 minutes) - Nuclear energy has long been the subject of debate, a fact that hasn't changed in the years since The China Syndrome's release. The cast and crew muse about the film and its controversies in this second of two strong featurettes.

• Deleted Scenes (SD, 4 minutes) - Three scenes are included.

• Theatrical Trailer (HD, 2 minutes) -

The China Syndrome Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Debates surrounding journalism and the safety of nuclear energy haven't gone anywhere in the last thirty-five years. If anything, both have intensified, making The China Syndrome one of those fascinating movies that have somehow managed timelessness despite their age and what you might assume would be outdated topical tension. Sandpiper's Blu-ray makes it all easier to enjoy too with a decidedly decent video transfer, a solid DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, and an interesting little supplemental package with two featurettes and a handful of deleted scenes. Give it a spin; you might be as pleasantly surprised as I was.