[.ca] Outbreak (Widescreen/Full Screen) (ISBN 0790731401)

From Amazon.com:
When Warner Brothers was unable to secure the rights to Richard Preston's terrifying nonfiction book The Hot Zone (purchased by a rival studio), they took the basic idea of a fatal virus on the loose in the U.S., added Dustin Hoffman and director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot), and produced an unusual thriller--a surprise hit--called Outbreak. The other picture, slated to star Robert Redford and Jodie Foster, fell through. The premise of Outbreak, which owes something to Elia Kazan's 1950 plague-scare movie, Panic in the Streets, is as terrifying as it is timely. As developers slash their way deeper into the previously unexplored tropical rainforests, they are exposed to radically new forms of life, including diseases, that in these days of commonplace international travel could turn into deadly epidemics almost before we know it. Hoffman's character and his estranged wife (Rene Russo) are disease experts called in to identify the unknown killer, which was carried into the country by an illegally smuggled monkey. The best sequence shows the disease spreading--through recycled air on a passenger jet, or a sneeze in a crowded movie theater. The final chase is pretty conventional, but the cast is terrific, including Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr., J.T. Walsh, and Zakes Mokae. --Jim Emerson

TENSE AND TERRIFYING:
Wolfgang Petersen's OUTBREAK, featuring a stellar cast of Oscar winners and nominees, is a brilliant, tense and terrifying nail-biter that had me on the edge of my recliner!! Dustin Hoffman is perfect in his role as the edgy virologist who discovers the horrifying ramifications of a new ebola-like virus; Rene Russo transcends that aloof beauty with a nuanced and touching performance as Hoffman's estranged wife; Donald Sutherland, who has yet to get his much deserved Oscar, is chilling as the general who will spare no one to protect a secret; Morgan Freeman as his co-consipirator with a conscience is great; Cuba Gooding Jr. as Hoffman's sidekick is perfect, as is Kevin Spacey as the doomed associate; J.T. Walsh in a three-minute scene is mesmerizing as he lays out the fate of Cedar Creek to a tablefull of bureaucrats. OUTBREAK is a brilliant movie, one that will make you think and will have you on the edge of fear throughout!

Stop that Virus!:
Viruses scare the bejesus out of people who spend any significant amount of time thinking about them. Stephen King has written a couple of horror stories where humanity is essentially destroyed by the flu. "Outbreak" taps into that primal fear and elevates a killer virus to a status cinematically usually only reserved for tornadoes, volcanoes, great white sharks or Godzillas. In Outbreak a bad virus is discovered in a deep dark place, carried by a cute monkey, and attempted to be stuffed into a military pandora's box. Wolfgang Peterson knows how to make a suspenseful movie as he proved with "Das Boot" and "Air Force One" and here he gets to work with a cast that would be difficult to reproduce today with Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Cuba Gooding, Jr, Rene Russo and Donald Sutherland. There are a few cliches in the film. Sutherland plays a stereotypical military general who sneers as he orders the death of thousands of innocents in the name of "National Security" - but he does it with skill and enthusiasm. Morgan Freeman dispatches a bomber crew with a speech that could have been replaced word for word with the same speech Slim Pickens delivers to his bomber crew in "Dr. Strangelove" ("I know you have reservations about what you've been ordered to do..... you wouldn't be human if you didn't....") There are several light-hearted moments, such as when Hoffman's Colonel is out in a helicopter flown by Gooding's Major and they all but acknowledge that they are the characters-in-a-disaster-movie-tasked-with-saving-humanity. "I don't need you to get negative on me now", Dustin says after Cuba summarizes the hopelessness of their situation. "Affirmative, Sir!"

Casualties of War.:
"In war, truth is the first casualty." - Aeschylus. In 1989, a secret U.S. Army SWAT team was called in after an Ebola outbreak among monkeys in a Reston, VA lab; a mere ten miles from Washington, D.C. They eventually determined that this particular strain wasn't contagious for humans - others, however, are; capable of producing a 90% mortality rate within a matter of days. The incident produced Richard Preston's bestselling book "The Hot Zone," on which this movie is loosely based (another project involving Robert Redford and Jodie Foster eventually folded). Like the Reston Ebola strain, the (fictitious) Motaba virus at the center of Wolfgang Petersen's "Outbreak" is brought to the U.S. by an infected monkey, caught near a village in the Zairean (now: Congolese) Motaba Valley. Unlike the Reston Ebola it is contagious for humans, with a 100% mortality rate within a single day. And unlike any known Ebola strain it is airborne, i.e. not only transmitted by direct human-to-human contact. Officially nobody has any prior knowledge of the virus at the time of its apparent first hit. In fact, once they've overcome their shock about its gruesome effects, USAMRIID Colonel Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman) and his assistants, Majors Schuler and Salt (Kevin Spacey and Cuba Gooding Jr.) - in Zaire to provide medical assistance - are downright ecstatic to have discovered a new virus; a once-in-a-lifetime event for most scientists, if it happens at all. What they don't know is that their own superiors, Brig.Gen. Billy Ford (Morgan Freeman) and Maj.Gen. Donald McClintock (Donald Sutherland) have encountered this virus before, albeit non-airborne, in a mercenary camp in 1967 ... and on McClintock's orders, firebombed the camp to secretly develop a biological weapon. Now McClintock insists that their knowledge remain secret even after a first Motaba outbreak in Boston, brought about by the Californian animal lab worker (Patrick Dempsey) who has unwittingly smuggled the carrier monkey out to sell it to a pet store; and after another outbreak in Cedar Creek, CA, transmitted through the pet store owner and a lab technician infected by his blood. McClintock's solution is the same as 30 years earlier: Firebomb the contaminated area and everybody in it, keep your weapon and be done with it. But unlike 1967, complete secrecy is no longer an option, as not only Colonel Daniels's team but also his ex-wife Robby (Rene Russo), who is now with the CDC and has helped contain the Boston outbreak, is aware of the virus's presence. Thus, McClintock opts for the reverse strategy, obtains a presidential OK for his "Operation Clean Sweep" - after a dramatic presentation to the assembled cabinet resulting in the conclusion that the "bug" is capable of spreading to the entire country, including D.C., within a mere 48 hours; and the admonishment "Be compassionate, but be compassionate globally" - and orders Ford to get Daniels out of the way and keep him "in line." Daniels, however, who has long earned a reputation for following orders rather selectively, rushes to Cedar Creek, to work alongside Robby and her team trying to contain the virus. In short order Ford and McClintock show up as well, and soon the town is crawling with soldiers, who seal it off to the outside world and implement a curfew, to prevent a further spread of the virus but also in preparation of "Operation Clean Sweep." A frantic race ensues; pitting Daniels and Salt, who set out to search for the host animal to develop an antiserum, against their own comrades. The premise of "Outbreak" is entirely believable; as evidenced by the 1989 Virginia incident - after all, it was mere luck that the Reston strain didn't prove contagious for humans - and by the fact that, as is public knowledge, various kinds of viral strains do exist in the U.S. and other countries; at the very least for experimental purposes. While their military use is banned under the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, there still is no functioning control mechanism in place (which was/is also a factor in the Iraq WMD debate). And although the U.S. is a signatory to both aforementioned instruments and has previously stated its non-use policy, the Bush government abandoned international discussions on the issue in 2001. So, "Outbreak" addresses enormously important concerns; and it does so compellingly and with a stellar cast. Dustin Hoffman imbues his Colonel Daniels with tremendous compassion but also a great sense of humor; and his snappy exchanges with Russo's Robby Keough and his team are a delight, especially those with Kevin Spacey, who in 1995 burst into movie audiences' collective awareness with this film, the Oscar-winning "Usual Suspects" and "Se7en." Morgan Freeman brings all his sensitivity to the movie's most intricate role, General Ford, who is caught between being party to McClintock's scheme and realizing its profound immorality. Then-27-year-old Cuba Gooding Jr. may have been a bit young to play a Major, but he certainly stands his ground; and few actors can portray a villain as menacingly as Donald Sutherland, although the script gives him little opportunity for true complexity. Unfortunately, "Outbreak" gets the full "Hollywood thriller" treatment, complete with dramatic score, two-dimensional villain, cliched ending and reliance on a few coincidences too many. This (and some plot inconsistencies) somewhat reduces its effect, preventing a good movie from becoming a truly great one - although its 'copter chases are pure eye candy; and it certainly helps that they were shot by Michael Ballhaus, arguably the business's best cameraman. But for the importance of its subject alone, and its outstanding cast, "Outbreak" is worth all the notice it has received. "\oThe Cedar Creek population\c are casualties of war. ... I'd give them all a medal if I could. But they *are* casualties of war." - "Outbreak," Maj.Gen. Donald McClintock. "\oN\co massacre has occurred ... no further action is warranted." - From the initial Department of the Army investigation report on the March 16, 1968 My Lai incident (Vietnam).

Awesome:
I loved this movie. That is all that can be said. That is all that is needed to be said.

A movie worth watching!:
Outbreak, brings to the screen the likely scenario that a deadly virus (similar to the Ebola virus) spreads rapidly endangering mankind, and threatening life on Earth. The likelihood of such a phenomenon is presently great indeed (as it always has been i.e. the Black Death etc), and hopefully the film will get many people thinking. The movie is very realistic in its approach, and conveys a much needed message of the dangers facing people, especially when dealing with viruses (how easily many of them spread e.g. an airborne virus in an airplane or a movie theater). Moreover, one realizes how the government would have to act in such an emergency and the type of use of the military one should expect in order to protect the majority of people that have yet to be infected and contain the spread of the disease. Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, and Rene Russo, whose performances are simply amazing, make this movie one of the best of its kind. The actors' great talent and chemistry clearly shows, thus providing a film that can be watched over and over again. Resident Evil (Milla Jovovich) is another very good movie dealing with virus-related incidents/threats, though it falls much more under "Horror" than Outbreak, which is a more "Thriller/Action" type of film. Another movie that comes to mind is Twelve Monkeys (Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, Medeleine Stowe), which is a futuristic/science fiction approach to similar virus-related threats to humanity. In short, Outbreak is a very good movie, it's an eye opener, and very much worth watching!