Andromeda Strain with a shot of Rambo

OUTBREAK (1995)

A 2020 Look Back by Jerry Saravia

"Outbreak" is one of those Hollywood earthbound-virus-threatening-humanity flicks that looks a little silly today, in light of the worldwide threat of the Coronavirus. Though based on the book "Crisis in the Hot Zone" which dealt with the horrors of the Ebola virus, the movie starts strong and then segues into some last-minute rescue attempts and incredible foresight from its lead character, a hero with amazing intuitive powers played by none other than Dustin Hoffman. The whole affair is somehow contrived, underwhelming and a bit cheap - trivializing real-life horrors when it comes to an airborne virus that nearly decimates an entire town and threatens to go worldwide. We will get into the silliness that seeps in after some established early scary scenes.

Hoffman is an Army Colonel who is also a disease expert. He gets wind of a virus outbreak in Zaire (the virus is known as the Motaba virus considering its proximity to Motaba River Valley of Zaire), the location of which a similar outbreak had happened 20-plus years earlier and, while wearing a hazmat suit and tracking the area  with a group of scientists, he discovers it is not airborne. Daniels is convinced it will spread like wildfire yet his superior (always a pleasing presence by Morgan Freeman) doesn't want to cause alarm. Nevertheless, the virus does spread through its cute little host, a frosty-haired monkey. First, the virus spreads in a ship headed to America, then some foolish guy (Patrick Dempsey) sells the monkey after already contracting the virus, then a pet store has the monkey, and then the virus enters a movie theater and eventually an entire California town where martial-law is instituted. People get sick with too much expediency and the horror becomes palpable and frightening, at least for a while. The virus is deadly beyond belief, though it has been proven scientifically to be inaccurate, and it not only causes bleeding from the eyes, ears and the mouth but it also liquefies internal organs! This is Ebola times 100. It also develops in your cells within an hour, though again such a virus would take longer (Check for the science behind "Outbreak" and "Contagion" at https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-contagion-pushed-hollywood-to-get-science-right).

The first hour of "Outbreak" is electrifyingly exciting, tense beyond belief and scary. We see how this virus travels and,  through the magic of notable cinematographer Michael Ballhaus ("GoodFellas"), the deadly paths it takes on unsuspecting people as the particles travel through the air infecting everyone is infectious (pardon the pun) cinema. This virus mutates and becomes airborne and even if the science is faulty, the effect these scenes had on me back then resonated and still do today, in light of the respiratory Coronoavirus we have to contend with. Seeing people wearing masks in the town of Cedar Creek brings the realism home, especially all the makeshift hospital beds where patients are dropping like flies. 

"Outbreak," unfortunately, still has the same problems it did 25 years ago - it is "The Andromeda Strain" with an adrenaline shot of "Rambo" action scenes. Yes, Hoffman gets to be an action hero-of-sorts as he improbably convinces two Army pilots not to bomb the town of Cedar Creek to kingdom come. I am sorry, what? How he convinces them is laughable (and I will not divulge it here). We have a few action scenes where Daniels and a daredevil pilot (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), who scoffs at the devastation the virus has wrought, are chased and shot at by Army pilots under the command of  Major General Donald "Donnie" McClintock (Donald Sutherland, who oozes menaces as he always can). McClintock's evil nature is resolved in a scene by Morgan Freeman as Brigadier General Billy Ford, MD that strains credibility. Even further straining credibility is Daniels' amazing ability to generate an antiserum from Brigadier General Ford, who has handily kept the original serum from the Zaire incident of 25 years earlier, and mix it with the monkey's antibodies. All this is done in an hour to save Daniels' former wife, also a disease expert (played with grace by Rene Russo). Logically speaking, this could take longer than an hour (see above article) and the contrivance of tracking down that damn monkey in record time is almost too unbelievable. This would probably take years to do everything that is accomplished in the shortest time span imaginable.

"Outbreak" is entertaining to a fault yet its strong start is diminished by contrived scenes and action elements that do not mesh with what should have been a disturbing, eye-opening thriller.  It assumes that nobody wants to see a deadly airborne virus destroying humanity as a doomsday thriller as the action heroics are brought in to save the day. Who would've thought that it would take a Dustin Hoffman character to save the world. Not this movie critic. And with our current pandemic and the race to find a vaccine that could logically take a year if not years, "Outbreak" seems redundantly harebrained in comparison to real-life.