Nightbreaker (1989) Characters, Setting & Themes Explained

Release, runtime and language

1989 · 99 mins · English

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Directed by

Peter Markle

Starring

Martin Sheen, Joe Pantoliano, Melinda Dillon, Lea Thompson, Emilio Estevez, Tom Bower

Dr. Alexander Brown arrives in Las Vegas to receive an award for his latest medical invention. There he meets an ex‑GI who confides that he was a test subject for atomic‑bomb radiation experiments in the Nevada desert during the 1950s. The film intercuts between a young Brown, then a U.S. Army‑guest psychiatrist interviewing soldiers exposed to excessive radiation and their casual ignorance, and an older Brown three decades later, wrestling with whether to expose the atrocity he witnessed.