Long and slow, but interesting and well-acted (as you would expect from a cast headed by Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher), this revolves around the real-life Karen Silkwood, the plutonium worker who set out to expose contamination risks and other irregularities at her plant.

This would make a fascinating subject for an hour-long TV documentary and, despite Streep's charismatic performance (which brought another deserved Oscar nomination), re-creating the flyaway character Karen must have been, as well as her rather goofy lifestyle, there are times when you long to jump up with a huge pair of scissors and cut great chunks out of the film, as director Mike Nichols drifts dream-like through the story.

Streep's performance, though, is something else: see it for that alone.

And modern-day star-spotters will have a field day catching early appearances by Fred Ward, Ron Silver, Will Patton, Tess Harper and others.