David Edelstein

“…. Streep, with her shag-cut brown hair and small mischievous eyes, plays Silkwood like the spoiled princess of Kerr-McGee, sashaying into work in short skirts and cowboy boots, blithely yanking open the foreboding steel doors. In the cafeteria, she's a flirty busybody, rummaging into her coworkers' lunches and business. At first, Steep's Karen notices things because she's smart and nosy and bored. Later she puts her snooping to work for the union, and when people start to notice her noticing things, she presses on in defiance. Working out all of Karen's feelings on the surface, Streep gives her lightest, least mysterious film performance: she paces briskly when she's outraged, and when her boyfriend moves out we watch her smile and shrug, bob her head from side to side, and pull compulsively at her hair. What keeps us from getting to know her as well as we might is the impoverished characterization in the movie, and its failure to let us forget, even for a moment, that she's a sacrificial lamb.”

David Edelstein
Boston Phoenix, Dec. 13, 1983