Outbreak

I remember back in science class when I was in the seventh grade, we had watched a movie that was about the Ebola virus. I didn’t know the title to the movie until last year when I had done some research. I remember that Morgan Freeman was in it playing a superior officer to the main character, so I Google searched “Morgan Freeman Ebola Virus,” and that’s when I found the title. It was the 1995 film directed by Wolfgang Peterson, “Outbreak.”

This interesting film is, as Ebert described it, “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.”

“Outbreak” is a clever, scaring thriller about a possibility of a bug that we follow, who actually kills humans after an entire day of being exposed to it by dissolving the internal organs. This is not pretty. This bug is actually a fact. Ebert mentioned that “something similar can be found in Richard Preston's new book, The Hot Zone.” The film occupies the same area as a number of science fiction movies about deadly takeovers and high-tech schemes, but has been made smartly and appeals human magnitude.

Now it starts off 30 years ago in Africa, where American doctors travel to a small village where the villagers have been killed by this bug. They promise a cure but instead call a plane that burns the village with a firebomb. Maybe the reason could be the bug it too lethal to handle in any other way. There is no information about where the bug came from, or why it landed in this remote area, even though the village witch doctor said worryingly, “It is not good to kill the trees.” Next thing you know, it goes to present day. One of the greatest actors of all time, Dustin Hoffman, and Rene Russo (in between Lethal Weapon 3 and 4) play a newly divorced couple, who both are disease experts. Hoffman’s character, Colonel Sam Daniels, works for the Army, and Russo’s character, Roberta "Robby" Keough, just got a new job at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. Throughout the film, we follow how their relationship is falling apart. In between the scenes, Petersen shows an African monkey that carries this deadly virus is shown illegally imported into the United States, and the smuggler, played by Patrick Dempsey, steals the monkey and takes her to California to sell on the black market, but on the way gets infected.

Now we get a montage of people that get infected from one carrier to another. This is not a funny montage, but a very scary one. The first carrier gets off a plane to Boston, he is red, sweaty, shaking and is close to not being able to stand, but obviously his girlfriend doesn’t let this disease interfere with their long kiss. Back in a small California town, an infected carrier sneezes in a movie theater, and the camera follows the germs as they make their way through the crowd. Ebert notes, “In a laboratory, a test tube breaks in a centrifuge, and a scientist is infected. And so on. 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.”

Soon there are reports of this deadly virus spread is seen from Boston and California. Colonel Daniels is given this case by his superior officer, played by Morgan Freeman, even though he and a colleague, played by Kevin Spacey, follow the infection and its spread. We also see glimpses of a conspiracy which is on Freeman’s own commanding officer, an evil genius general, played by another great actor, Donald Sutherland. For reasons that are never given to us, the Army is holding secrets about this virus, and also has an antidote. Unfortunately after it goes into different forms, only the monkey can be the only source as an antibody.

Petersen and his writers, Laurence Dworet and Robert Ray Pool, put together the tools of many different thrillers into one nail-biting story. Medical detectives are working, there is military conspiracy, martial and professional jealousy, and at the climax of all the action, Hoffman and his helicopter pilot, played by the very funny Cuba Gooding Jr., fly all over California and to a ship at sea, racing against time and another deadly virus spread.

You will enjoy “Outbreak,” even while you are watching yourself being manipulated. Colonel Daniels is a character we have seen so many times before; Ebert notes, “he's the military version of that old crime standby, the Cop With a Theory No One Believes In.” Sutherland plays a role that is so familiar that you can watch him playing the opposite of this character wearing a Soviet uniform in the HBO movie, “Citizen X.” But these roles are will written and acted, and Morgan Freeman is a general who is in the middle of all of this brings in the realism. He is a general that is at the crossroads of obeying instructions and his own better character.

There has got to be a law in Hollywood these days that all thrillers end with a chase. Simple dialogue-driven endings are too slow for today’s attention-deprived audiences. Ebert ended his review by saying, “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"). But by then the movie had cleverly aligned its personal, military, medical and scientific plots into four simultaneous countdowns, and I was hooked.”

Well, I hope that this review was informative and you learned something new. Definitely see this film because it is one of the best. Stay tuned next week when I review another great Morgan Freeman film.