Review of Silkwood (1983) by Paul W — 31 Jul 2011

I've added a few older movies to my Netflix queue. I remember watching Silkwood when it was new and thinking it was pretty political, but on this second viewing, decades later, it comes across as less political and more of an interesting story.

Meryl Streep plays Karen Silkwood as an everyday working woman who gradually becomes alarmed over safety lapses at a nuclear plant and gets involved with the workers' union, alienating her lover and co-worker (Kurt Russell) and becoming persona non grata with management and many of her co-workers.

Eventually a Washington DC-based union official, clearly using her to advance his own career, talks her into sneaking evidence of a safety coverup by plant officials out of the plant and delivering it to a New York Times reporter.

She dies in a car crash on her way to meet the reporter. As I recall, all these things were based on the true story of Karen Silkwood, and all are factual. There's no firm evidence Silkwood was murdered, but that's what everyone believed at the time and the movie strongly suggests that's how it went down.

Streep and Kurt Russell are great in this movie; Cher is just sort of there and I'm not even sure why. Good movie; well worth watching, especially if you didn't see it first time around.