This monkey, of course, carries the deadly bug, and the smuggler, unable to sell it, releases it in a California woodland, although not before being infected. Paper Type: Assignment. and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango. It's a weird kind of comfort food: as bad as it seems for us, at least it's not as bad as what's in the movies. A microscopic entity, "one billionth [human] size" with the potential of wiping out the population of the United States in 48 hours, doesn't represent a sufficient threat. Release Calendar DVD & Blu-ray Releases Top Rated Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Showtimes & Tickets In Theaters Coming Soon Coming Soon Movie News India Movie Spotlight. Full Review Dolores Barclay Associated Press Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. Film Review . Wolfgang Petersen's "Outbreak" is a clever, daunting thriller about such a possibility. The bug is based on fact; an account of something similar can be found in Richard Preston's new book, The Hot Zone. Soon reports of a plague outbreak filter in from Boston and California. Sidney Poitier’s 7 Most Memorable Performances, All Harry Potter Movies Ranked Worst to Best by Tomatometer. Copyright © Fandango. By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy But the roles are well written and acted, and Morgan Freeman, as a general caught in the middle, brings something quite real: a general trapped between obeying instructions and his own better instincts. Despite of being from 1995, then "Outbreak" is still a movie that very much holds it own and is very watchable even now in 2020. Sign up here. Fear the sneeze. Pages: 5 (1092 words) Download Paper: 21. Hoffman is assigned to the case by his superior officer (Morgan Freeman). It may all be a tad hammy... but the fear is palpable. You could read this as an Aids allegory, but it also works well as a regular against-the-clock jeopardy thriller with conspiracy cover-up overtones. Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! Outbreak isn't a terrible film, but it doesn't trust that relative realism has enough power to hook and hold a movie audience. Outbreak movie reviews & Metacritic score: An Army doctor races to find a serum for a deadly virus in order to save a California town and its residents. Outbreak will keep you on the edge of your scat, and every time someone sneezes or coughs in the audience, you'll pay attention. Alien Outbreak (2020) Review A small rural community is quarantined by an alien presence. Outbreak Rather like the mutated virus that propels its story, "Outbreak" starts out as one movie and becomes another before it's over. Residents begin to behave strangely and mass panic spreads throughout. TV Shows. The … Outbreak received mixed reviews. I am not sure I believed the helicopter chase sequence in "Outbreak," and I am sure I didn't believe the standoff between a helicopter and a bomber (in a scene with echoes of "Dr. Strangelove"). The irony is that Outbreak, for all its lurid finesse, ends up leaving us more dazed than terrified. Forgot your password? "Outbreak" opens 30 years ago, in Africa, as American doctors descend on a small village that has been wiped out by a deadly new plague. There is medical detective work, military conspiracy, marital and professional jealousy, and finally an action climax in which Hoffman and his daring helicopter pilot (Cuba Gooding Jr.) fly all over California and even out to a ship at sea in a race against time and against another deadly bomb drop. Audiences polled by CinemaScoregave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale. But by then the movie had cleverly aligned its personal, military, medical and scientific plots into four simultaneous countdowns, and I was hooked. Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo are a newly divorced couple, both experts in disease-causing microorganisms. It mixes spectacular action, high-flying intrigue and even terror in an apparent but banal pastiche that, to top it all, tries to transcend its premises. Mere dialogue-driven endings are too slow for today's attention-deprived audiences. It is a Hollywood law these days that all thrillers end with a chase. In a laboratory, a test tube breaks in a centrifuge, and a scientist is infected. Whitney Boatright 09/25/2007 . According to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 59% of 44 critics gave the film a positive review for a rating average of 5.6 out of 10. "Outbreak" is the kind of movie you enjoy even while you observe yourself being manipulated. Not a pretty picture. Outbreak . The implication is that the microbe is too deadly to deal with any other way; there is no information about where the bug came from, or why it surfaced in this remote area, although the village witch doctor is quoted ominously: "It is not good to kill the trees." Views: 412. Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password. While the first one is considerably more frightening and plausible than the second, the entire film has been put together with such skill and attention to viewer excitement that audiences will readily swallow the whole enchilada without a burp. What's on TV & Streaming What's on TV & Streaming Top Rated Shows … The film, which grossed $67,659,560 domestically and $122,200,000 internationally, was a commercial success. It follows the career of a microscopic bug that kills humans within 24 hours of exposure by liquefying the internal organs. The Hoffman character has been recycled out of dozens of other movies; he's the military version of that old crime standby, the Cop With a Theory No One Believes In. Petersen's vigilant, enlivening direction never allows the story's death-of-mankind topic to undermine its personal powers, deftly mixing in humor, as well as other tonal lighteners, to nurture it. and the Terms and Policies, With the help of others, […] Outbreak isn't a terrible film, but it doesn't trust that relative realism has enough power to hook and hold a movie audience. The film is less effective, unfortunately, at trusting its audience to remain invested in Cedar Creek's drama, which results in two grating subplots that become the A-plot in the draggy third act. Back in a small California town, an infected carrier sneezes in a movie theater, and the camera stalks the germs as they wend their way through the crowd. Regardless of how ridiculous this movie was, it's extremely entertaining. '90s medical disaster movie has violence, peril, language. And so on. Category: Movie. The thriller occupies the same territory as countless science fiction movies about deadly invasions and high-tech conspiracies, but has been made with intelligence and an appealing human dimension. He works for the Army, and she has just taken a new job at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Paramount+ Launches with New Shows, Deep Catalog, How This Year's Golden Globes Could Impact Award Season, Master Storyteller T. Shawn Taylor to Host Workshop on March 6th as Part of No Malice Film Contest, A New Mexican Canon: The Filmmakers Rebalancing the Narrative of Their Country. Apparently, it isn't enough for a plague to be the villain. It is one of the great scare stories of our time, the notion that deep in the uncharted rain forests, deadly diseases are lurking, and if they ever escape their jungle homes and enter the human bloodstream, there will be a new plague the likes of which we have never seen. [Full Review in Spanish]. The film is at it's best when it concentrates on the interplay between Hoffman, Russo and Spacey. Outbreak (1995) Movie Reviews - Cinafilm has 491 reviews of Outbreak from movie critics and film fans. It also possesses an antidote, although after the microbe mutates into a different form, only the original carrier - the monkey - can serve as the source of an antibody. Local police officers Zoe (Katherine Drake) and Patrick (Ritchie Crane) battle through the night to take control as they become cut off from the outside world. Is Outbreak any good? But as he and a colleague (Kevin Spacey) follow the trail of infection and spread, we get glimpses of a deep conspiracy involving Freeman's own commanding officer, a sinister general played by Donald Sutherland. Don't have an account? As we follow the disintegration of their relationship, Petersen intercuts scenes showing an African monkey being illegally imported into the United States. Outbreak topped the U.S. box-office list its opening weekend with earnings of $13,420,387, and spent three weeks at number one before Tommy Boy's release. Well, especially more so now in 2020 given the Covid-19 situation. A rare killer virus from the African jungle has started an epidemic in … Petersen and his writers, Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool, now combine the conventions of several different kinds of thrillers into one gripping story. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Movies. This quote opens the movie and provides the theme for the movie, which is essentially the rights of the few versus the good of the many. Petersen now shows the disease being spread from one carrier to another, in a montage that would be funny if it were not so chilling: When the first carrier gets off a flight to Boston, he is flushed, sweating, trembling and almost too weak to stand, but his girlfriend, of course, doesn't let his illness stand in the way of a long, deep kiss. Audience Reviews for Outbreak. Sutherland plays a role so familiar that he, himself, can be seen playing the flipside of the same character in a Soviet uniform, in the current HBO movie "Citizen X." Menu. Ratings, review and more on Cinafilm.com Synopsis: The single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance on the planet is a virus.” —Joshua Lederberg, Nobel laureate . Oct 20, 2015. A movie review by James Berardinelli. The film, Outbreak, portrays the efforts of an army virologist, Sam Daniels, to prevent a global biological disaster. By Emma Stefansky. All rights reserved. For some reason, the Army has secrets involving this bug. Warner Bros. … Published on 3/11/2020 at 1:30 PM. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun … 'Outbreak' Is the Feel-Good Pandemic Movie You Should Be Watching No, seriously. I especially liked the moment when the smuggler takes one bite out of a cookie on an airplane, and a little kid asks him if he's planning to eat the rest of it. The Hoffman character has been recycled out of dozens of other movies; he's the military version of that old crime standby, the Cop With a Theory No One Believes In. Flash forward to the present. They promise relief but send instead a single airplane that incinerates the village with a firebomb. "Outbreak" is the kind of movie you enjoy even while you observe yourself being manipulated. The whole movie is so intensely melodramatic and unbelievable... Don't expect any mercy from the people who made "Outbreak," a smashingly first-rate thriller that will do more to rev your pulse rate than a week of aerobics classes. Which, incidentally, is also the reason why I opted to sit down and watch this classic one more time.