Silkwood

Directed by Mike Nichols, Silkwood follows Meryl Streep’s Karen Silkwood as she sets out to expose the degree to which her company’s cost-cutting measures might be harming its employees. Filmmaker Nichols, armed with Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen’s screenplay, delivers an often breathtakingly deliberate endeavor that nevertheless remains quite watchable from start to finish, as the picture boasts a gritty, lived-in sensibility that generally proves difficult to resist and is heightened by the stellar efforts of its various performers – with Streep’s predictably enthralling turn matched by top-notch periphery players like Cher, Kurt Russell, Bruce McGill, and Ron Silver. It’s clear, too, that Silkwood benefits from a stirring balance between the central character’s personal exploits and her ongoing whistleblower-focused maneuvers, while the expectedly grim finale does pack a far more potent (and emotional) punch than one might’ve anticipated – with the end result a mostly compelling true-life story that could (and should) have been pared down from its overlong 131 minutes.

*** out of ****