OUTBREAK
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, Cuba Gooding Jr., Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland. Screenplay: Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool. Director: Wolfgang Petersen.
You've got to love it when Hollywood producers find themselves scrambling to be the first out of the blocks with an idea. As has already occurred in recent years with Robin Hood and Wyatt Earp projects, there was a race last year between two studios to get killer virus films into production. A project based on the current best seller THE HOT ZONE was originally set with Robert Redford and Jodie Foster starring, but script troubles caused the deal to fall apart. That left OUTBREAK alone to cash in on the virus fever generated by THE HOT ZONE, and it's likely to be a big hit. Though its conventional action climax doesn't fulfill the promise of a gripping first hour, it's still a satisfying popcorn thriller.
Dustin Hoffman stars as Sam Daniels, an Army scientist specializing in epidemeology. When he is sent to investigate a plague in Zaire, he discovers a highly communicable virus with a 100% mortality rate. His attempts to warn his boss General Billy Ford (Morgan Freeman) go mostly unheeded, until a monkey carrying the virus is smuggled out of Africa and finds ints way into a small Northern California town. As the disease spreads rapidly through the population and the town is quarantined, Daniels goes to work with his team of experts: ex-wife Robby Keough (Rene Russo); veteran bug-hunter Casey (Kevin Spacey); and the cocky but untested Salt (Cuba Gooding Jr.). Unfortunately, the military has its own interests to protect, and that means that one way or another, no one is getting out of town alive.
The first half of OUTBREAK, which actually deals with the spread of the disease, is as tense an hour as I have spent at the movies in a long time. Director Wolfgang Petersen makes some great decisions filming scenes like a tour through the Army's medical facility, which moves ominously from labs studying relatively benign viruses to those studying the bad boys. There is also a wickedly funny moment when an infected man sneezes in a movie theater, and we watch particles flying through the air into other people's mouths. As long as the focus is on the progress of the epidemic, and on the attempts by Hoffman's team to trace the path of the infection, OUTBREAK is a taut and often nerve-wracking experience.
What eventually becomes clear is that Petersen's direction is orders of magnitude better than the script from which he is working. The battle-of-wills, love-hate relationship between Hoffman and Russo is forced and unnecessary, as well as ripped off from THE ABYSS. The attempts at humor are frequently limp, the performances (except those by Space and Gooding) perfunctory and the characters of the standard, one-dimensional action film variety. And those aren't the only elements that warrant comparison to standard action films, as the conclusion becomes not a down-to-the-wire hunt for a cure in the lab, but a down-to-the-wire helicopter chase, or rather several down-to-the-wire helicopter chases. The sequences are exciting and well-filmed, but they don't belong in this movie any more than a U-boat battle would have belonged in SCHINDLER'S LIST.
I have a personal beef with OUTBREAK as well, namely that it relies so much on government conspiracy theories. The prospect of a deadly disease wreaking havoc is powerful enough without resorting to paranoia-mongering, and I have yet to see much evidence that any really big secret can be kept in the talk show age, let alone for thirty years as is the case in OUTBREAK. Frankly, it's sloppy plotting, and indicative of OUTBREAK's roots as part of a race to be first rather than best. For one hour, OUTBREAK keeps the tension high, but Petersen could have done much more with a script just a re-write or two more polished.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 killer viruses: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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