Mister Minutes' Cinema Circus

After any great event, or in any time of strife, we must remember the age-old adage: go where the money is. In this case, that meant Netflix releasing the movie Outbreak, and their new documentary series Pandemic, in the middle of the Covid-19 spread. Gotta milk those views while everyone’s stuck at home, right? You can’t really blame them; people need something to watch in quarantine (hopefully that includes these reviews), and they need to satisfy their morbid curiosity. So I watched Outbreak, a 1995 film about an extremely lethal virus that makes its way to California and spreads like wildfire (no joke intended there). Dustin Hoffman leads a team of expert virologists in a race against time to stop the spread in a rural town, before it breaks out and infects the whole country.

I actually really like pandemic movies. Outbreak, Contagion, even 28 Weeks Later (I haven’t seen Days yet, sue me); there’s something fascinating about watching the unstoppable spread of a terror virus ravaging the earth. Of course, the current world situation is far removed from a fun action blockbuster, and no last-minute, nick-of-time cure is going to stop it in its tracks. But you’re not here to get depressed about that, let’s get depressed about the movie virus!

The movie starts in Africa in the 1960s, where American Army doctors are investigating a lethal virus in a small mountain village. It’s a horrifying sickness that produces seizures, flu-like symptoms, and eventually liquefies your organs. The doctors promise to return with help, but instead wipe out the entire village with a bomb (good analogy for US foreign policy as a whole). The opening features shots of a specific kind of monkey, heavily foreshadowing the fact that the disease in the village came from that species. Flash-forward to 1995, where a monkey is captured by [poachers?] and taken by boat to San Francisco. I point out these monkey shots because it makes me wonder — 30 years the virus has lived in monkeys, and it never spread to humans again until now? A nitpick, but let’s move on. Patrick Dempsey, in his shortest-lived and most monkey-centric role, takes the primate to a small town pet shop, which becomes the epicenter for the virus and oh my God I just realized a huge plot hole.

Patrick Dempsey, now sick beyond belief, sweating like a pig, pale as paper, and sporting red circles around his eyes, is somehow let on a plane to Boston to see his girlfriend. It’s actually comical how unconcerned everyone is that this guy is shambling through the airport touching people and looking like a sweaty zombie. Anyway, they both get sick and die the next day, confirming Dustin Hoffman’s suspicions that the virus has made it to America. By some unbelievable miracle, no one else in Boston gets sick — the epicenter is actually back in Monkeytown, California, where almost immediately an entire movie theater is infected. The hospital is full to bursting, the army is called in to lock down the town, the people go nuts. Now, as much as I did like this movie, there are some ways I think they could have pushed it further. For one, while the people of the small town do get angry and slightly violent under military quarantine, there’s never an instance where real violence breaks out. The army does shoot up a truck trying to escape, but that’s it. Aside from some rude shoving and protests, the town seems to quiet down pretty quick. I also would have liked to see the national or global reaction to this virus. It kills within 24 hours, goopifies your insides, and spreads in the air — show me the French or Japanese or wherever news freaking out about the situation and its possible spread. Hell, show me the American public freaking out.

That being said, I did really enjoy the movie. It was paced well, the escalation of the virus felt believable — even though it was brought on by a veritable comedy of errors — and the performances were all great. Dustin Hoffman was excellent as Sam Daniels, an Army virologist who faces consistent doubt from his superior officers, until by the end of the movie he’s at the end of his rope, holding his own in verbal disputes with Morgan Freeman trying to save the world. Horrible sex offender Kevin Spacey puts in a great performance as another doctor on the team, and gets a pretty horrifying scene when the virus hits him. There’s a truly heart-wrenching scene where an infected mother turns herself over to the army, knowing this is the last time she’ll ever see her husband and children. Aside from that though, there’s little in the way of sympathy for the townspeople. Which isn’t to say that they’re ignored by the script, but they’re there to be victims in the doctors’ story, not characters in their own right. The film could have made a deep impact (no Morgan Freeman joke intended) if it had focused a little more on the ordinary people living through this hell.

My main issues with the movie come from the script; towards the middle of the movie, Dr. Hoffman realizes that Evil General Donald Sutherland is going to drop a bomb on Monkeytown, just like he did with the African village in the '60s. Hoffman and Dr. Cuba Gooding, Jr. steal a helicopter to escape the town, then fly to Palisades and... take over a news station at gunpoint? O-okay. Then they have a helicopter chase sequence with General Sutherland trying to kill them? I mean it was awesome, but okay? The story briefly moves from tense, believable medical thriller to almost-action movie, then wobbles between the two. The climax, with Hoffman and Cuba facing off against a giant bomber plane in their tiny helicopter, was a tense, nail-biting ending, but overall the more action-oriented moments involving the doctors don’t work as well. I would have preferred to see the doctors doing their work in the hospital, while the townsfolk and soldiers become more violent around them.

I enjoyed the characters, but the majority of them were just assholes. Morgan Freeman shrugs off Dustin Hoffman’s predictions, and continues to roadblock him even when he’s trying to save the town. He is actually belligerently unhelpful until the very last minute, when he does the most baseline thing to help save the day. The twist of the movie is that the army either manufactured the virus or wants to use it as a bioweapon, so Donald Sutherland wants to bomb the town to end the spread and cover up the truth, which only he and Freeman know. Once Dr. Dustin Hoffman exposes him, only then does General Morgan Freeman decide to be a decent human being and arrest Sutherland. The general then implies that they will both suffer for their part in the cover-up, but unfortunately we never get to see it. In my opinion they should both be tried for mass murder, but the movie ends pretty quickly after that, on a touching reunion with Hoffman’s ex-wife recovering from the virus.

Overall I found Outbreak to be an exciting and frightening medical thriller, with some boring action movie bits thrown in for good measure. Solid performances, great special effects, an awesome helicopter chase sequence, and an adorable apocalypse monkey make Outbreak one to watch, I definitely recommend it.