With Hollywood generally bifurcating into the very, very large and expensive movies and the very, very small and independent ones, it is a relief to be able to go back and watch older American films from generations that still produced material for the middle ground. The China Syndrome is a great example: released in 1979, this nuclear thriller has smart characters and an arresting plot without ever having to resort to histrionics or over-the-top visuals. A large part of the film is simply people having conversations in rooms – but oh what people. Oh what conversations.

Television news reporter Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) chafes under her light entertainment assignments, until a puff piece visit to a local nuclear power station coincides with an unexpected emergency. She and camera operator Richard Adams (Michael Douglas) fight to get their story on air, while station manager Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon) struggles to get the power company owners to take the crisis seriously.

The China Syndrome was met with scorn and condemnation by the nuclear power lobby in 1979; that is, until the real-life Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania partially melted down a week and a half into the film’s release. It is that sudden cultural relevance that ensured it become a commercial hit, and it is what the film is mostly remembered for today.

The screenplay – courtesy of Mike Gray, T.S. Cook, and director James Bridges – is smartly developed and plotted. When an emergency hits the power station’s control room, concern turns to panic in a relentless, fast-paced fashion. The focus is not on what has occurred on a technical level, but how the stress and confusion begins to cause the workers’ calm to unravel. Lemmon is predictably excellent in his role, an everyday man situated right in the middle of the near-disaster, and gives the film its emotional heart and core. Also worth noting is co-star Wilfred Brimley as the working class reactor technician Ted Spindler: he is remarkably subdued and naturalistic.

Perhaps a little less grounded are Fonda and Douglas, whose dogged pursuit of their story leads to some unbelievable – at the very least unprofessional behaviour. While both actors are hugely talented and charismatic on screen, it undeniable that both of them have done better both before and since.

It is the restraint that makes the film work as well as it does. An actual disaster at a nuclear power station would generate a completely different sort of movie. A near-miss, however, is stimulus for corporate cover-ups, questions of journalistic integrity, paranoia, and self-doubt. Bridges keeps the film operating at a believable level, with characters demonstrating reasonable motivations. He allows the horrors of potential nuclear disaster to speak for itself, and lets the audience engage with the issues in an uncomplicated, straight-forward manner. Here in Australia it is currently prescient all over again, with one major political party promising to construct a series of nuclear power stations across the continent when they next win office. The China Syndrome asks its audience just how much of a risk are they willing to accept. It asks ‘how much do you trust a profit-motivated corporation to spend its money keeping the people safe?