Sebastian Shaw has a nice lunch in the backyard, just before the nuclear fallout.

"Hey!  Did that reactor just blow up?"

"Wow.  That reactor just blew up!"

Senator Palpatine  searches for his apprentice under the guise of a doctor who treats people when a reactor blows up.

Don't eat the radioactive strawberries, please.

Palpatine is consumed by the Dark Side of the radioactivity.

"Hey!  This man is dead!"

Radioactivity or heart attack? You decide!

Chernobyl: The Final Warning - 1991 (TV) Color
Review by Comrade Shaw

Movie Rating: 3/5 Stars
Shaw Rating: 5/5 Scars

Synopsis: A dramatization of the true story of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. 

Sebastian Shaw's role: "Grandpa"

Back in 1986, the lack of safety regulations in a nuclear power plant outside of Kiev led to a fire and radiation leak, forcing thousands of people in a 30 mile radius to be moved out, and causing all sorts of health, social, and political consequences.

John Voight plays the American Dr. Gale specializing in bone marrow transplants, who goes to Russia to administer aid.  He's also jogs a lot.

They fly in a bunch of high-tech equipement, they try to save a bunch of cooked people, they meet with Gorbachov, and they come to the conclusion that Chernobyl is a final warning to the world regarding the potential tragedy of nuclear war.

Sebastian Shaw plays a firefighter's grandfather.  He's an old, stubborn man, who hides with his wife in a ramshackle shack to avoid the mandatory evacuation.  It's interesting to see Shaw playing an old man, and comparing his 'old man' voice to the dying voice of Anakin Skywalker. You have to wonder if he was 'turning it up,' or if he really was as weak and old as he appeared.

There's a great surprise in the film when Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) makes an appearance as a Russian doctor on the scene at Chernobyl.  But he stays a little too long, and winds up getting radiation poisoning himself.

Overall, the film is kind of a bore. But it is interesting at the end, where they lay down some incredible statistics about how many lives will be potentially effected, and the fact that the radiation will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years. Basically all they did to contain it was pour cement on top of it.  There's all sorts of interesting reading at Wikipedia.

At the end of the film, the police finally catch Grandpa sitting at his favorite backyard chair. But as they begin to berate him, they find out that he's just dropped dead. Not because of the dangers, his wife tells them, but because he's suffered another heart attack. But he died peacefully, looking at his garden with the reactor just across the stream. 

The Shaw Factor: Shaw fans have to wade through a lot of yakety-yak between scenes with Shaw. There aren't a great many lines, but his wheezing old man voice will remind you of the great Anakin Deathbed scene.

Character Vices: Cigarettes
Character Death: Yes.


Conclusion:  If you get a chance to rent it free from the public library, you might want to check it out. He's in the very first scene, the very last, and two others sprinkled within.

Available on VHS / DVD? You might be able to find a VHS copy at Half.com for a few dollars.