From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Mar 16 16:46:30 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!doc.news.pipex.net!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!uwm.edu!lll-winken.llnl.gov!fnnews.fnal.gov!gw1.att.com!nntpa!not-for-mail From: leeper@mtgbcs.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) Subject: REVIEW: OUTBREAK Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.movies,rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #03348 Originator: ecl@mtgp003 Keywords: author=Leeper Sender: ecl@mtgpfs2.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Nntp-Posting-Host: mtgp003.mt.att.com Reply-To: leeper@mtgbcs.att.com Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 19:19:52 GMT Approved: ecl@mtgpfs2.att.com Lines: 175 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:2701 rec.arts.sf.reviews:730 OUTBREAK A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1995 Mark R. Leeper Capsule: The first 80 minutes of this film are an accurate, frightening, and original look at an all too real threat, the possibility that an Ebola-like virus would get loose in the United States. But, unlike Robert Wise directing ANDROMEDA STRAIN, Wolfgang Petersen did not trust science and character to drive his story. He mires the final third in the cliches of an action film and betrays the power of his material. We have an interesting action thriller instead of a real classic. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4). Some minor spoilers in the review and a separate article of (non-spoiler) comments on epidemic predictions follow the main body of the article. The film starts with a quote saying that viruses pose the greatest threat to human existence on this planet. That is probably fairly accurate. Hey, want to see something really scary? I am not talking scary because things jump out at you or actors wear plastic masks. I am talking scary because it is only too possible. It probably has already come near to happening in recent years. Most of OUTBREAK is a very credible extrapolation of what might well happen if a seriously dangerous virus got loose in this country. If Zaire Ebola had gotten loose close to home the events shown in OUTBREAK are really quite possible. In fact it is difficult to read the non-fiction books THE COMING PLAGUE by Laurie Garrett or THE HOT ZONE by Richard Preston without envisioning scenarios not unlike the one in this film. As the film opens with an outbreak of a viral disease in Zaire in 1967, the U.S. Army's response to eliminate the disease is quick but effective. Twenty-eight years later an Army team from Fort Dietrich led by Dr. Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman) finds a new viral disease has broken out in the Motaba River Valley and dubs the disease Motaba. Even Daniels, who is used to working with the likes of Ebola, Lassa, and Hanta, is frightened by the virulence of Motaba. And even as he is returning home to report the terrible new disease, Motaba virus is traveling to the U.S. by its own route. And a disease with the virulence to infect 260,000,000 people in 48 hours and to kill them in not much more is loosed. Daniels wants to pursue the new disease but is ordered off. Ironically, his ex-wife, Dr. Roberta Keough (Rene Russo), who works for the Centers for Disease Control, has an opportunity to investigate the same disease Sam has told her about. Daniels finds his strings being pulled by his superior officer, played by Morgan Freman, and a higher- up general, played by Donald Sutherland, neither of whom want him working on the new virus. Sutherland is quick to call in drastic action to quarantined areas. "Be compassionate," he tells a Presidential commission on the crisis, "but be compassionate globally." What he sees as compassion on the global level is something very different on the local level. The film clearly doesn't agree with this policy, but under the circumstances he may be talking sense. One problem with the script by Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool is that it is all too obviously trying both to be realistic and at the same time to be an action film. The two just don't go that well together. OUTBREAK wastes time on developing the rocky relationship between the two divorced doctors. Then it wastes the last third of the film on an unlikely and gratuitous action story built around a surprisingly tired and over-used premise. It makes a human the villain as if the story did not have enough viral villains. And the human villain's motive is a strikingly overused cliche. More disappointing, the race to understand and control the new virus is diverted into a standard action-film chase. This takes time and emphasis away from more interesting questions such as how is it possible to maintain a strict quarantine on a town of 2600 people? When the chases are over it is all the harder to remember what set this story apart from so many similar action films. It is a shock to see Dustin Hoffman in a science fiction film and one in which he plays an action hero, albeit a reluctant one. Donald Sutherland plays much the same character he played in PUPPET MASTERS, though he plays the character as seen from a different viewpoint. Rene Russo is competent and likable in her role, and it is nice to have a woman over thirty-five in a starring role, but she does not imbue her character with any real power. Curiously, for a German, director Wolfgang Petersen seems to have a need to put action in a story that might work better as a more cerebral piece. That is a fault here even as it was with his ENEMY MINE. This is a film I can well recommend for its first two-thirds and if you have come that far, at least you will not be bored when the film turns from extrapolation to action. But the final forty minutes or so has some serious sacrifices of logic for commerciality. Somebody apparently decided that the more interesting and more credible story would not sell. I was at times thinking this would be a strong +3, but it lost a point in the final reel. It remains a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. The following are comments I made about OUTBREAK before seeing the film: "Let me put it this way. In its present form the Satan Bug is an extremely refined powder. I take a saltspoon of this powder, go outside into the grounds of Mordon and turn the saltspoon upside down. What happens? Every person in Mordon would be dead within the hour, the whole of Wiltshire would be an open tomb by dawn. In a week, ten days, all life would have ceased to exist in Britain. I mean all life. The Plague, the Black Death--as nothing compared with this. Long before the last man died in agony, ships or planes or birds or just the waters of the North Sea would have carried the Satan Bug to Europe. We can conceive of no obstacle that can stop its eventual world-wide spread. Two months, I would say two months at the very most.... The Lapp in the far north of Sweden. The Chinese peasant tilling his rice fields in the Yangtze valley. The cattle rancher on his station in the Australian outback, the shopper on Fifth Avenue, the primitive in Tierra del Fuego. All dead. Because I turned a saltspoon upside down.... Who would be the last to go? I cannot say. Perhaps the great albatross forever winging its way round the bottom of the world. Perhaps a handful of Eskimos deep in the Arctic basin. But the seas travel the world over, and so also do the winds; one day, one day soon, they too would die." That was from the novel THE SATAN BUG by Ian Stuart (a pen name for Alastair MacLean). Almost the identical quote was used in the film version. And it hooked me into a different type of science fiction I had not known about before, epidemiological science fiction which looks at what would happen if some really virulent and contagious disease got loose on modern society. I like to consider science fiction a field where people are thinking out some of the most serious issues that could be shaping our future. It is the ideal place to work out some of the more frightening epidemic scenarios, much as it was for working out scenarios of nuclear war. But on the whole science fiction writers have avoided talking about disease or have limited themselves to separating themselves from the real action by examining isolated groups of scientists as in ANDROMEDA STRAIN or the aftermath as in EARTH ABIDES or the British television series SURVIVORS. Even THE STAND concentrated only on people who were to survive. The time is right for science fiction to consider the most serious societal aspects of epidemics, but I do not know if OUTBREAK is the right film. Consider some of the issues that particularly dangerous viruses raise. Suppose some new virus that came along was something so bad that the rights of the afflicted were overwhelmed by the danger they pose to those not yet afflicted. That is pretty much what happened with diseases in the Middle Ages, and all our medical research has done has been to raise the threshold a little to make it harder for a disease to reach that level. Science fiction writers, be they in literature or film, have never seemed as excited by that concept as they might be. The attitude of writers has seemed to be, "After all, we have licked polio and smallpox and it is just a matter of time for the rest of the diseases." Well, now people are starting to realize that we are not as secure as we thought. Malaria and tuberculosis are on the rebound; AIDS is not readily amenable to treatment. And we think of AIDS as being a horrible disease, but we still have the luxury (and, yes, the responsibility) to consider the rights of the victim. If AIDS was as contagious as Zaire Ebola the politics of dealing with it would have to be very different. (Incidentally, a very sobering thought: the best evidence is that Sudan Ebola did not have a common origin with Zaire Ebola. That means that in the course of a few short months nature had invented the Ebola virus twice.) How would we handle a disease for which care-giving was tantamount to suicide? What if the mere proximity of victims constituted a genuine threat? Many of the most bigoted myths and exaggerations about AIDS are theoretically possible in some disease. In fact, even AIDS is probably worse in some regards than the disease in OUTBREAK. It has a much longer interval of contagion before showing symptoms. Combine that with high susceptibility and you have a monster a few microns long that is a lot scarier than anything most writers have considered so far. Hopefully, recent books on the subject of newly emerging diseases may get people thinking about these issues even if science fiction writers continue to shy away from the subject. Mark R. Leeper mark.leeper@att.com Copyright 1995 Mark R. Leeper From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Mar 20 11:11:02 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.kth.se!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!trane.uninett.no!nac.no!ifi.uio.no!sia.sics.se!eua.ericsson.se!erinews.ericsson.se!cnn.exu.ericsson.se!convex!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!lll-winken.llnl.gov!fnnews.fnal.gov!gw1.att.com!nntpa!not-for-mail From: JBERARDINELL@delphi.com (berardinelli,james) Subject: REVIEW: OUTBREAK Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.movies,rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #03346 Originator: ecl@mtgp003 Keywords: author=Berardinelli Sender: ecl@mtgpfs2.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Nntp-Posting-Host: mtgp003.mt.att.com Reply-To: JBERARDINELL@delphi.com (berardinelli,james) Organization: - Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 19:16:57 GMT Approved: ecl@mtgpfs2.att.com Lines: 87 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:2706 rec.arts.sf.reviews:731 OUTBREAK A film review by James Berardinelli Copyright 1995 James Berardinelli RATING (0 TO 10): 6.9 U.S. Availability: general release 3/10/95 Running Length: 2:08 MPAA Classification: R (Graphic disease, language) Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Renee Russo, Morgan Freeman, Donald Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr., Patrick Dempsey, Kevin Spacey Director: Wolfgang Petersen Producers: Arnold Koppelson, Wolfgang Petersen, and Gail Katz Screenplay: Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus Music: James Newton Howard Released by Warner Brothers Apparently, it isn't enough for a plague to be the villain. 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. Therefore, OUTBREAK has decided to give us a nasty, power-mad U.S. army general who is more concerned with pursuing his own agenda than saving a couple thousand citizens in the small California community of Cedar Creek. The problem with OUTBREAK is that extraneous plot elements like Donald Sutherland's general, a couple of aerial chases, and an unbelievably contrived search for a monkey, keep getting in the way of a chilling horror story. What would happen if a contagious, lethal virus with no known antidote, got out of control? How would the citizens, doctors, patients, and government deal with the situation? In this film, we're given tantalizing glimpses of that scenario, but the need to interject action and adventure for a momentary thrill robs OUTBREAK of dramatic power. Yes, this movie is an entertaining and sometimes wildly-exhilarating ride. The helicopter chase sequence is thrilling--only it doesn't seem to belong here. And, when the movie is over, any more-than-cursory consideration of the plot reveals gaps that even sizable doses of coincidence and contrivance can't completely fill. OUTBREAK is not one of those pictures that improves in retrospect. The story opens with a fast-paced, dazzling display of firepower as an entire village is annihilated in Zaire's Motaba River Valley. Ordered by two army types (Donald Sutherland and Morgan Freeman), this is deemed the only viable "cure" for a rampant plague. Many--both the sick and the healthy--die, but the virus is kept from spreading, at least for the better part of three decades. But in 1995, it shows up again, only this time it's not restricted to Africa. Brought across the Atlantic by an infected monkey, the Motaba infection mutates into a more deadly strain, and begins to attack the American public. A small group of dedicated professionals are the first--and perhaps only--line of defense against the virus. These include Col. Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman); his ex-wife, Robby (Renee Russo); his best friend, Casey (Kevin Spacey); and the newcomer to the team, Maj. Salt (Cuba Gooding Jr.). Defying direct orders from Freeman's General Ford to stop the investigation, Sam uses all the resources at his disposal to win the battle against his microscopic foe before one of his loved ones is stricken. As directed by accomplished film maker Wolfgang Petersen (IN THE LINE OF FIRE, DAS BOOT), OUTBREAK is a beautifully photographed, competently-acted piece. Dustin Hoffman is carefully contained as Daniels, never straying over the top. Cuba Gooding Jr. gives a stable, if sometimes cliched performance, as the "sidekick." Freeman and Russo are solid in supporting roles. Only Sutherland, sporting an American accent, can't avoid chewing on the scenery. His portrayal, like his character, would be more at home in DR. STRANGELOVE than here, and it's a sore spot that the movie never quite recovers from. Most viewers are likely to enjoy OUTBREAK, especially coming as it does in the midst of a veritable wasteland of general release pictures. It's an escapist thriller with good guys to root for and bad guys to hiss at. Yet the source of lamentation is not what's on screen, but what could have been there. No one likes to be teased, but that's exactly what this movie does to us, with predictably frustrating results. Fluff--especially the variety with a lot of flashes and bangs--often makes for perfect light entertainment, except when, as in the case of OUTBREAK, it starts out with the promise of so much more ... a promise that is never fulfilled on a higher-than-superficial level. -James Berardinelli (jberardinell@delphi.com) From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Mar 24 13:03:18 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!news.kth.se!nac.no!nntp.uio.no!ifi.uio.no!news.sics.se!eua.ericsson.se!erinews.ericsson.se!cnn.exu.ericsson.se!convex!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!fnnews.fnal.gov!gw1.att.com!nntpa!not-for-mail From: ram@mbisgi.umd.edu (Ram Samudrala) Subject: REVIEW: OUTBREAK Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.movies,rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #03357 Originator: ecl@mtgp003 Keywords: author=Samudrala Sender: ecl@mtgpfs2.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Nntp-Posting-Host: mtgp003.mt.att.com Reply-To: ram@mbisgi.umd.edu (Ram Samudrala) Organization: The Centre for Advanced Research in Biotechnology Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 16:46:47 GMT Approved: ecl@mtgpfs2.att.com Lines: 45 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:2716 rec.arts.sf.reviews:737 OUTBREAK A film review by Ram Samudrala Copyright 1995 Ram Samudrala OUTBREAK is almost like a Robin Cook novel (I do believe he wrote a different novel with the same name), but at least Cook would've gotten the science part of this thriller right. The deadly Motaba virus is out loose in a small town in CA. Dustin Hoffman and his ex-wife Rene Russo are army doctors who are trying to stop the virus. The solution according to the screen writers, who're clearly are not well versed in immunology at all, is to obtain "anti-serum" from the carrier of the virus, which happens to be an African monkey that has been transported to California. The reason I question the scientific premise is because you cannot simply take the antibodies the monkey might have and inject into a human and assume it will work (not to mention the fact that they produce litres of this stuff)! They throw words like ELISA (Enzyme Linked ImmunoSensitive Assay) around but yet they show this insulting ignorance. What is interesting, however, is the conspiracy plot that is thrown into this movie. A different strain of the Motaba virus was earlier discovered by the army and an antibiotic (?) was developed against it, but with the help of two doctors, Morgan Freeman and Donald Sutherland (who's once again the classic villain), the government keeps the antibiotic a secret so they can use the virus as a biological weapon. When the new strain is discovered by Hoffman in Africa, the army wants to do a similar thing, which would mean sacrificing the lives of 2600 people in the town. I find this subplot interesting primarily because it once again shows how people in power abuse it. You do not impose a quarantine with hundreds of soldiers equipped with semi-automatic rifles. Nor do you randomly kill people when they try to resist under a stressful situation. But I wonder what the government would do in a situation like that. And what would you do if you were a citizen of the town that the government decided to impose curfews on, etc.? How would you defend yourself? It is scary to think that the government, on a whim, has the power to make any environment you're in totally Orwellian. Still, it wasn't a bad movie. The helicopter scenes are cool and Hoffman and Sutherland do have their moments. --Ram Ram Samudrala From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Apr 7 16:37:19 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!psinntp!psinntp!psinntp!scisun!ees1a0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu!fnnews.fnal.gov!gw2.att.com!nntpa!not-for-mail From: rhodes_steve@tandem.com (Steve Rhodes) Subject: REVIEW: OUTBREAK Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.movies,rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #03381 Originator: ecl@mtgp003 Keywords: author=Rhodes Sender: ecl@mtgpfs2.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Nntp-Posting-Host: mtgp003.mt.att.com Reply-To: rhodes_steve@tandem.com (Steve Rhodes) Organization: Tandem Computers, Inc. Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 19:39:53 GMT Approved: ecl@mtgpfs2.att.com Lines: 85 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:2777 rec.arts.sf.reviews:741 OUTBREAK A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1995 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** OUTBREAK is a detective story and a thriller about a germ. It was produced and directed by Wolfgang Petersen of DAS BOOT and IN THE LINE OF FIRE fame. This is a director who knows how to create great tension that really grabs the audience's attention and holds it through out the entire movie. He is also a master at action sequences and the military helicopter scenes in this flick were evidence of his abilities as well as that of the cinematographer. OUTBREAK starts in a remote village in Zaire. From the very beginning of the show we know that there is a virus of cataclysmic proportions. It works so fast that if you are not dead in twenty-four hours after being exposed, you are safe. This germ detective story is excellent and the pacing is good so that your eyes stay glued to the screen. Go to the bathroom before entering, you don't want to miss any of the details. It is complex and yet quite easy to follow. The germ detective work had much the flavor of the movie AND THE BAND PLAYED ON about the hunt for the source of the AIDS illness. OUTBREAK at its best was almost as good. Petersen is a master director. After seeing this movie, I should warn you that you may never want to fly in airplanes again. You certainly will find yourself leaving any theater where someone coughs. Sad to say, we also learn from the beginning that there is a subplot in the show that is going to have us believe that our military has some covert operations of massively evil proportions going on. Without this ridiculous and unnecessary sojourn into again lambasting our own generals, the movie had a perfectly plausible ring to it. The acting was uneven. Dustin Hoffman, whom I have not seen in many movies recently, stars as the military chief of biological research. His research was on finding the causes of and curing viral infections--not on developing killer germs. Hoffman delivers star quality work. He is totally believable and never goes overboard with his acing which he has been known to do in other films. Also excellent in the show was Hoffman's sidekick played by Cuba Gooding Jr. He played the aggressive green recruit character in fresh and interesting ways. He enliven every scene he was in. Rene Russo who was so excellent in Petersen's last show, IN THE LINE OF FIRE, was given a poorly written part as Hoffman's domestic counterpart--the head of germ research at the CDC. She was also his ex-wife. (Believably, having an ex-wife as beautiful as Russo, Hoffman spent most of the movie trying to get her back.) Russo's acting was not credible and moreover, I would just as soon have seen her whole part eliminated. The germ research had the energy to stand on its own and did not need a romantic second subplot to add excitement to the movie. Another tragedy of the film was the wasting of Morgan Freeman as Hoffman's commanding general. This was the weakest character Freeman has ever been asked to play--very one dimensional. This brilliant actor (GLORY, DRIVING MISS DAISY, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, etc.) did not seem to care about the show and gave a pedestrian performance. Finally, the less said about Donald Sutherland's part as the Major General who was Freeman's boss, the better. Both characters were cliches that should not have been in a movie of this caliber. OUTBREAK runs an exciting 2:00. It is rated R for bleeding eyeballs and other makeup effects that you see on Halloween masks. There was a 10 year old behind me that loved the movie. I recommend this tension filled detective story to everyone above the age of about 9, and I award it ***. Absent the unnecessary diabolical military subplot, I would have been able to give the movie another half star. ______________________________________________________________________ **** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable. Reviewed Written On: March 11, 1995 Opinions expressed are solely mine & not meant to reflect my employer's. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Apr 9 12:28:04 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!psinntp!psinntp!psinntp!scisun!ees1a0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu!fnnews.fnal.gov!gw2.att.com!nntpa!not-for-mail From: rhodes_steve@tandem.com (Steve Rhodes) Subject: REVIEW: OUTBREAK Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.movies,rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #03381 Originator: ecl@mtgp003 Keywords: author=Rhodes Sender: ecl@mtgpfs2.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Nntp-Posting-Host: mtgp003.mt.att.com Reply-To: rhodes_steve@tandem.com (Steve Rhodes) Organization: Tandem Computers, Inc. Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 19:39:53 GMT Approved: ecl@mtgpfs2.att.com Lines: 85 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:2777 rec.arts.sf.reviews:741 OUTBREAK A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1995 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** OUTBREAK is a detective story and a thriller about a germ. It was produced and directed by Wolfgang Petersen of DAS BOOT and IN THE LINE OF FIRE fame. This is a director who knows how to create great tension that really grabs the audience's attention and holds it through out the entire movie. He is also a master at action sequences and the military helicopter scenes in this flick were evidence of his abilities as well as that of the cinematographer. OUTBREAK starts in a remote village in Zaire. From the very beginning of the show we know that there is a virus of cataclysmic proportions. It works so fast that if you are not dead in twenty-four hours after being exposed, you are safe. This germ detective story is excellent and the pacing is good so that your eyes stay glued to the screen. Go to the bathroom before entering, you don't want to miss any of the details. It is complex and yet quite easy to follow. The germ detective work had much the flavor of the movie AND THE BAND PLAYED ON about the hunt for the source of the AIDS illness. OUTBREAK at its best was almost as good. Petersen is a master director. After seeing this movie, I should warn you that you may never want to fly in airplanes again. You certainly will find yourself leaving any theater where someone coughs. Sad to say, we also learn from the beginning that there is a subplot in the show that is going to have us believe that our military has some covert operations of massively evil proportions going on. Without this ridiculous and unnecessary sojourn into again lambasting our own generals, the movie had a perfectly plausible ring to it. The acting was uneven. Dustin Hoffman, whom I have not seen in many movies recently, stars as the military chief of biological research. His research was on finding the causes of and curing viral infections--not on developing killer germs. Hoffman delivers star quality work. He is totally believable and never goes overboard with his acing which he has been known to do in other films. Also excellent in the show was Hoffman's sidekick played by Cuba Gooding Jr. He played the aggressive green recruit character in fresh and interesting ways. He enliven every scene he was in. Rene Russo who was so excellent in Petersen's last show, IN THE LINE OF FIRE, was given a poorly written part as Hoffman's domestic counterpart--the head of germ research at the CDC. She was also his ex-wife. (Believably, having an ex-wife as beautiful as Russo, Hoffman spent most of the movie trying to get her back.) Russo's acting was not credible and moreover, I would just as soon have seen her whole part eliminated. The germ research had the energy to stand on its own and did not need a romantic second subplot to add excitement to the movie. Another tragedy of the film was the wasting of Morgan Freeman as Hoffman's commanding general. This was the weakest character Freeman has ever been asked to play--very one dimensional. This brilliant actor (GLORY, DRIVING MISS DAISY, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, etc.) did not seem to care about the show and gave a pedestrian performance. Finally, the less said about Donald Sutherland's part as the Major General who was Freeman's boss, the better. Both characters were cliches that should not have been in a movie of this caliber. OUTBREAK runs an exciting 2:00. It is rated R for bleeding eyeballs and other makeup effects that you see on Halloween masks. There was a 10 year old behind me that loved the movie. I recommend this tension filled detective story to everyone above the age of about 9, and I award it ***. Absent the unnecessary diabolical military subplot, I would have been able to give the movie another half star. ______________________________________________________________________ **** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable. Reviewed Written On: March 11, 1995 Opinions expressed are solely mine & not meant to reflect my employer's.