MovieChat Forums > The China Syndrome (1979) Discussion > First Half + Lemmon: Great

First Half + Lemmon: Great

posted 14 years ago by palindromicevilolive
2 replies | jump to latest

I thought the first half of the movie was amazing. And Jack Lemmon gave an amazing performance from start to finish. That said: I felt that many of the plot elements of the second half were a bit jarring and out of place with the tone established in the first half. The murderous corporate goons and the standoff in the control room just seemed like an unnecessarily melodramatic way of bringing the story to a head. Up until that point, I felt this story was something that really could have happened, or indeed, could happen today. But once Lemmon's character grabbed the guard's gun, I felt like the film severed its ties with plausibility and as a result, I didn't feel nearly as invested in the story.

[–] dkgambler 12 years ago

I agree, to the extent the movie was to remain credible, it went out the window when the Lemmon character has his voila! moment. By golly, a professional engineer pencil whipped the inspections! I'm gonna track him down and give him a good talking to! Oh no! The construction company has its own security men! And those security men are hot on the trail of the Lemmon character!

If they wanted to make a statement that nuclear power is baaaad because of all of the moving parts, human error, etc. could cause us all to glow, well that's one thing. But professionals abdicating their responsibilities blindly and "security men" of construction companies, well then it became a propaganda piece. But at least it gave us another 20 or 30 shots of a very pensive Mr. Goodell.

[–] redban (5157) 3 years ago

I agree.

One issue with the second half, or the ending, was that the villain seem undeveloped. The guy who orders the scram (the one who stared at them hard, leading Jane Fonda to ask “who is that?”) — we hardly knew that dude.

I also felt the chase/assassination stuff was too far fetched. Even a billion dollar company wouldn’t risk killing people that way imo, and I have doubts that they would get away with it.