'Virus' (1999)
A movie review by Walter Frith
wfrith@cgocable.net
Member of the ‘Online Film Critics Society' http://ofcs.org/ofcs/
The true invigorating art of science fiction and horror is quickly fizzling out in Hollywood. Like comedy (especially in television), these genres are extremely hard to succeed at. Never easy but often attempted, the absurdity of many of them rarely pan out into becoming unintentional comedies but that's what happens in 'Virus'.
The opening scene unravels like a cheesy bad dream in the South Pacific where a Russian ship carrying satellite and computer technology and in contact with the MIR space station, suddenly becomes paralyzed when a strange force field in outer space sends a shock wave through MIR and directly connects it to the ship. Many pieces of equipment are destroyed, the crew is seemingly incapacitated and things fade to black.
FADE IN: An expedition team is traveling through the South Pacific. Led by the captain (Donald Sutherland), he is hauling cargo using a platform connected to a towing line that's connected to his barge. Other members of his team are William Baldwin and Jamie Lee Curtis, both of whom give extremely bland performances as the banality of their characters suffers from an over extended screenplay of intimate shock value throughout its running time and a lot of action scenes that don't flow smoothly but rather come off as short controlled bursts of energy and not as genuine moments of excitement. A raging typhoon forces the captain's cargo to be cut for fear of bringing down the entire vessel. The crew finds the Russian ship and figure out that maritime law allows them to salvage its remains and walk away with approximately 30 million dollars. They soon learn that like the rules of old fashioned material greed dictate, there is no such thing as easy money.
The film takes a sharp turn here after a somewhat promising start. The basic premise is simply that the force field that struck the ship from MIR is breathing life into a new form of alien technology that allows mechanical parts to assemble themselves and gives them the will to kill humans and use them as spare parts in mechanical assembly. Sort of like the Borg from 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'. Oh, where is there a nuclear device when you need one?
Gale Anne Hurd who has worked in a producing capacity for such films as 'The Terminator', 'Aliens', 'Tremors', and 'Dante's Peak', takes another stab at her craft with 'Virus' and the film's title, I'm sure, is no pun intended at making fans sick of it after about the first half hour. Who is John Bruno and where did he come from? Another failed attempt at a new director trying to teach an old genre new tricks and it doesn't work. After serving as a miscellaneous crew member for such films as 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day', 'Die Hard 2', 'The Abyss', and 'Heavy Metal', Bruno is not suited to the top chair on the set of a motion picture. His direction of the film is bogged down under a lot of dark and hollow scenes of repetitive energy. The film fails for primarily one reason: lack of scene diversity. If you're going to make a film that's set primarily in one location for the entire running time, you had better have a dynamite screenplay but this one is more like a weak sparkler. 'Virus' put me in mind mostly of 1998's 'Sphere' where a strange alien force was at work by the sea. Maybe that's why both films look watered down!
OUT OF 5 > * *
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* * * * * - a must see * * * * 1/2 - don't miss it * * * * - an excellent film * * * 1/2 - a marginal recommendation * * * - can't quite recommend it * * 1/2 - don't recommend it * * - avoid it * 1/2 - avoid it seriously * - avoid it AT ALL COSTS 1/2 - see it at your own risk zero - may be hazardous to your health
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