277.
Outbreak
7/10
For once, Netflix kept a movie around long enough to get back to my initial selections. Outbreak is a film from the 90s' which I actually thought I had seen years and years ago but I must have been walking through the living room as the parents had it on as I can't remember anything about it. Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo, two leads that I haven't had the chance to experience in other movies or at least anything that comes to mind will bring a new direction for me. Other cast members include Donald Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr, Kevin Spacey and the everlasting Morgan Freeman. That's not a bad ensemble for a 90s' movie. You can guess from the title what the movie will be centred around and with what's gone on in the past year, I wonder if there are similarities.
The movie starts in the 60s' during mutinies in the African Jungle in which the American's glad send some extra troops to help. During their time there, they are exposed to a virus which is a deadly fever and mortality rate is at 100% once you've been exposed. To cover this up, two U.S. Officers played by Sutherland and Freeman, drop a bomb on the village and wipe everyone out within a mile radius.
It was very interesting to see where we go from here as firstly we are given a tiny back story for Hoffman and Russo's characters who are going through a divorce but in good old fashioned movie magic, they are going to have to work together to save the world. This is when we begin to relate to the state of the world right now. The virus is not taken with the respect it deserves and ends up finding its way to the mainland USA through a smuggled monkey that attacks a couple of blokes. A couple of days later and everyone is bamboozled as these guys die with blood coming from everywhere possible. As the virus was once just passed on by contact with the host, the virus mutates whilst in a small town. Sound familiar? It is now airborne and everyone is asked to stay inside and isolate until a cure is found. People are out protesting, getting sick, the hospitals are overrun and they are still no closer to working out who the host was and getting the antibodies to create the cure. Things turn a little personal as Spacey contracts the virus along with Russo's character and Hoffman takes it on himself to cover the truth and get the vaccine.
The movie turns a little politic as Hoffman then tries to find out the secrets which were covered up years before. The US had been keeping a strain of this virus as a chemical weapon and along with that, a cure for that strain. The issue is that they still need the host of the new strain to cure everyone. In the town, things have gotten violent as a lockdown is forced and everyone begins to panic. This is all while Sutherland is still trying to cover up the past by shooting down Hoffman as he is flying to the lab with the monkey who is holding the cure. Finally, Morgan Freeman steps up and asks his fellow leader to step down. Calling off the bombing that they had planned for the town and eventually letting Hoffman's character do his job. Giving Hoffman the chance, the vaccine is rolled out and he sits at the side of his ex-wife as she recovers and the movie ends there. Quite abruptly in my opinion. I still had some questions like did the vaccine work? Surely someone made it out of the town whilst carrying the virus? I just did expect the credits to roll so soon after the 'cure' being plugged into one of the lead character's arms.
I don't think I have nodded along with a movie as much as I had done with Outbreak. Each time something else was happening, it was happening in 2020/2021 too. Lockdowns, protests and strains were the buzz word in the film just as they had been in the media for the last ten months. The story was always going to follow the standard struggle until our lead saved the day but it was very interesting to see the man-made virus aspect and using the virus as a weapon. There had been conspiracy theories floating around regarding the coronavirus and COVID-19. I hope that people with that theory don't come across this movie because it'll just fuel them. The movie was easy enough to follow but it still gets me with how the movie ended in such a manor. I expected to see patients back on their feet, the correct people being put behind bars and even a little twist that the virus has been detected elsewhere. Instead, we got a couple trying to patch up their marriage and a black screen for our troubles.
As mentioned earlier, this was a decent cast listing for a movie in the 90s' with Hoffman and Russo being the ones that aren't really active at the moment, along with Spacey but let's not get into that. The one role that stood out for me and I wanted to follow the character arch throughout was with Morgan Freeman. I racked my brain to remember if I had ever witnessed Freeman in a 'bad guy' role in the past but there's nothing I can come up with. I refused to believe that the character would remain in the role and with Sutherland fulfilling the role instead, it was easy for Freeman to turn into what we expect by the end and actually help in saving the day. I don't have a bad word to say about anyone in this movie when it comes to the acting and roles played. I enjoyed each character and as none were alike, they all brought something new to the story.
I came into this film thinking that with everything going on in the world right now, a sense of escapism is always needed. It's impossible to get that from a movie that would remind you of what's going wrong outside your door but I really enjoyed this movie. With the events of what will soon be the last twelve months, it's crazy to see so many similarities between this 90s' movie and real-life 20 years later. With how quick this one ended, it's only a dream right now that it becomes the case with COVID.
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