Fukushima: Ameaça Nuclear

Surprisingly, the movie has no pre-disaster story about a random family, lovers, or civilians. It starts by providing all the attention to the incident, like a documentary with a clear timeline.

If you're familiar with the Japanese culture, you will not say the movie is full of overacting & chaotic screams, cause there are none. The discipline of the plant employees and their sense of responsibility implied throughout the movie is heartwarming.

As we get to hear, it was a disaster that happened due to underestimating nature. But the effort they take to prevent it from happening feels real. Those people who actually worked in the plant are heroes.

The acting is fine, realistic. If you could live in there for 2 hours, you'll feel your tears streaming down at some point in the movie.

Reactors and their issues ... well actually it is us humans who have the issues, when those reactors have "incidents". Man made, nature made (although one may argue that man is responsible for a lot of the nature catastrophes) or however else ... these things happen! Now I am not an engineer or an expert, so I can't say if or how this would have been possible to avoid.

I can say that the movie is quite tension filled and shows us personal heroism - something you may expect from Japanese and something we have seen in a TV show about Tschernobyl too. Good actors and quite the harrowing retelling of what occured. I do expect there to be a bit of exaggeration to say the least ... but what movie does not do that? Even documentaries heighten certain things for better effect. Real life Drama, real life "heroes" ...

I watched this movie the first time on Netflix in Europe. It was pretty good, good actors, bit cheap CGI but ok, as far as Japanese movies go, it's pretty decent. However, there were some jarring cuts to "American" soldiers and "American" embassy personnel that completely changed the tone of the movie, putting a spin on it that it the poor Japanese should be helped by Americans or otherwise will not manage to cope with the situation.

On a rewatch using a different site, I found out that the jarring American scenes are only in there in western markets, to appeal to foreign viewers. The original cut doesn't include any western bits and leave a lot of the cheesy and redundant scenes out of it.

So, if you watch this, make sure you watch the Japanese cut in Japanese language. You will thank me later.

As Japanese, we have to keep thinking why our nation was helped out of ultimate destruction at that time. Major element might have been simply a chance, considering the fact that we could hardly understand what was going on.

However, it is also true that nuclear engineers struggled for their lives in order to save Japan. Common people behaved calmly amid such a hopeless situation. It was not because somebody ordered them to do so but they originally had the sense of mission. Their noble sense was well expressed in this work.

Memory of Fukushima disaster must not be forgotten. I hope this movie can contribute to this purpose.

A sobering view of the disaster, and a reminder of what happened to the people there and what they did. Well-produced throughout, and with good acting from all. There is a little family drama but it is not overdone and fits the situation. It's very interesting to see the Japanese culture and approach to the events.