The China Syndrome

Named for the fictional result of a nuclear meltdown (where reactor fuel melts through the crust of the Earth all the way “to China”), Bridges’ biting thriller traces a reporter’s investigation of a cover-up of safety hazards at a Los Angeles nuclear plant. A gripping and timely depiction of the decade’s nuclear suspicion, the film’s coincidental (and perhaps prescient) release twelve days prior to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident spawned unanticipated conversation and acclaim. Both Fonda and Lemmon received Oscar nods for their portrayals of two strangers bound by a mutually terrifying discovery.