Radium Girls (2020)

Radium Girls is the kind of true-story drama that sneaks up on you: quiet, intimate, and then suddenly infuriating in the best way, as it reveals how ordinary work can become a battleground for dignity and truth. Joey King and Abby Quinn give the sisters at its center a lived-in warmth and grit, so the fight never feels like a history lesson—it feels personal, urgent, and heartbreakingly plausible. The film’s tone is steady and compassionate rather than sensational, letting the creeping dread and mounting resolve do the heavy lifting as a community of young women realizes they’ve been treated as disposable. It isn’t a flashy courtroom-thriller, and its low-budget simplicity shows at times, but if you want an engrossing, well-acted tribute to women who helped bend labor law toward justice, it’s absolutely worth your time.

Radium Girls wants to honor a genuinely horrifying piece of labor history and give these women the dignity of being heard, and the story itself is powerful enough to deserve attention. The problem is the film tells it in a fairly flat, made-for-TV way: the script leans on familiar beats, the characters can feel more like placeholders than people, and some fictionalization and inserted footage muddy the impact instead of sharpening it. If you’re hoping for a fierce, enraging courtroom crusade that lights a fire under you, this may leave you oddly unmoved. Still, Joey King and the cast bring earnest commitment, and if you mainly want a clean, accessible overview of the tragedy without graphic content, it can do that job.