Rating (1 to 10) : 6
Summary: Dustin Hoffman battles a virus, a conspiracy, and at times, his ex-wife.
The virus is an interesting topic but perhaps not one that adapts well to a movie because it deals with science and information and that requires a certain pacing to make the movie effective. But to get all the nuances and facts incorporated, it might make the movie a bit boring or lengthy. This one certainly has pacing problems.
Sam Donalds (Dustin Hoffman, Charlie in “Rain Man”) is a US Army medical doctor who studies viruses at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID for short), a fictitious organization studying various viruses and diseases. His ex-wife Robby (Rene Russo, Lorna, Martin Rigg’s love interest in “Lethal Weapon 3”), is also a medical doctor studying viruses, with whom he just had a divorced and who is moving to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. Throughout the movie, their professional relationship is apparent but their personal relationship is underdeveloped.
The screenwriters did do some research from books like The Hot Zone or Level 4, Virus Hunters of the CDC to depict the security levels, which are based on the lethality and communicability of the virus. The movie depicts the different levels of security for at USAMRIID. They range from Level 1 to Level 4, with Level 1 requiring minimal medical safeguards and Level 4 requiring full body suits so that no respiratory or physical contact is ever made with the viruses.
The movie makes the point that human medicine has stopped most of the prevalent communicable diseases, creating a myth that contagious epidemics were a thing of the past. But in the last two decades, virulent viruses like Lassa fever, the Hanta virus, and Ebola have appeared and dispelled such myth because these viruses are so contagious and so lethal, yet modern medicine is ineffective in preventing or treating outbreaks. The new virus in the movie is the Motaba virus, which first appeared in the jungles of Africa during 1967 but disappeared and laid dormant in monkeys. Now, because one infected monkey was captured and imported into the US to be used for medical experiments, the Motaba virus appears again, but this time, in the United States. Motaba seems like a more lethal Ebola virus, with the victims suffering flu-like symptoms at first, but then dying painfully of hemorrhagic fever.
Sam and Robby start noticing the Motaba outbreak as various individuals who come in contact with the monkey become sick and bleed to death. At first the virus spreads thru contact with an infected person’s body fluids (sweat, saliva, blood), but then it mutates to become communicable by respiratory means. The movie captures this beautifully by showing nasal vapors from an infected person dispersing in the air inside a theater after he sneezes – you follow the water globules floating and then landing on other victims. Soon, there is a crisis as an epidemic breaks out in a small town called Cedar Creek. Sam and Robby rush to the scene but Sam’s superior, Gen. Billy Ford (Morgan Freeman, Red in “The Shawshank Redemption”), impedes their efforts to find the vector and a cure.
Here’s where the movie starts to have problems. At this turning point, we find out that Motaba didn’t appear from nature but was artificially created as a biological weapon. An element of conspiracy is added to spice up the movie, yet I would argue that this movie already had too much on its plate to have this introduced. The screenwriters obviously thought that a movie based just on investigating and discovering a cure for a virus would be too bland for the average audience so they had to make it more exciting. But in doing so, the movie plot spirals off the path as it morphs from a drama to an action thriller, as Donalds, along with his assistants Casey (Kevin Spacey, Lloyd in “The Ref”) and Major Salt (Cuba Gooding, Tre in “Boyz N the Hood”), fight the conspiracy and the virus at the same time. And while Dustin Hoffman is more than capable in the leading role in a drama, he is not so good in an action role – he is too intellectual and awe-uninspiring.
Because of the divergent plot lines – finding a cure for the Motaba virus and fighting the conspiracy – the movie jumps from plot to plot, making the movie inconsistent. The director Wolfgang Petersen and the screenwriters, probably in the attempt to keep the movie length under 2.5 hours, then crams all the subsequent unfolding events in the last 40 minutes or so, making the story seem rushed so that it can conclude with no loose ends. Petersen could have done a better job ameliorating the major defect in the script.
What a waste of the first 2/3rds of the movie. The movie progresses so diligently up to the turning point, only to be scurried along to meet time constraints. Some of the props were questionable too – the uniforms for the characters had incorrect rank insignias for a US Army officer. Couldn’t they have bought some authentic rank insignias at a military memorabilia store? But again, the biggest failure was the script and the movie pacing.