Some history:
Columbia outbid Warner Brothers for the film rights to the non-fiction book "The Hot Zone", and got to work on a script entitled, "Crisis in the Hot Zone". Warner Brothers shrugged its shoulders and decided to make a competing killer disease film NOT based on the book; and so they got together a script, director and cast as quickly as possible in the hopes of getting "Outbreak" to cinema screens first. After a brief tussle Columbia realised the fight wasn't worth it, and backed out. "Crisis in the Hot Zone" was never made.
Probably a pity, for "Outbreak" shows every sign of being conceived in haste. For a film about one of the most terrifying scenarios available - the new Black Death - it's surprisingly unfrightening. Try to remain calm, is the tag-line. You won't have to try very hard.
The screenwriters - and let's not blame them, since I suspect that they had but a single weekend in which to write it all - sprinkle the film with tiresome clichés I won't bother to mention - not that this matters very much. The real problem is that things are done just too easily. By the end of the film Dustin Hoffman is leaping tall buildings in a single bound - which just makes us feel that the buildings couldn't have been so high, after all.
(A side point: why, yet again, is the United States the only thing that matters? The same new killer virus is already on the loose in Africa and could strike without warning elsewhere - why doesn't this worry anyone?)
Basically this is another movie killed by undue haste. The director does his job reasonably well, the dialogue is uninspired but not clunky, and Dustin Hoffman has enough charisma to keep us interested in his character, at any rate. It's not really a bad movie. But Warner Brothers has slapped up any old thing and called it a taut thriller - and it certainly isn't that.
Columbia outbid Warner Brothers for the film rights to the non-fiction book "The Hot Zone", and got to work on a script entitled, "Crisis in the Hot Zone". Warner Brothers shrugged its shoulders and decided to make a competing killer disease film NOT based on the book; and so they got together a script, director and cast as quickly as possible in the hopes of getting "Outbreak" to cinema screens first. After a brief tussle Columbia realised the fight wasn't worth it, and backed out. "Crisis in the Hot Zone" was never made.
Probably a pity, for "Outbreak" shows every sign of being conceived in haste. For a film about one of the most terrifying scenarios available - the new Black Death - it's surprisingly unfrightening. Try to remain calm, is the tag-line. You won't have to try very hard.
The screenwriters - and let's not blame them, since I suspect that they had but a single weekend in which to write it all - sprinkle the film with tiresome clichés I won't bother to mention - not that this matters very much. The real problem is that things are done just too easily. By the end of the film Dustin Hoffman is leaping tall buildings in a single bound - which just makes us feel that the buildings couldn't have been so high, after all.
(A side point: why, yet again, is the United States the only thing that matters? The same new killer virus is already on the loose in Africa and could strike without warning elsewhere - why doesn't this worry anyone?)
Basically this is another movie killed by undue haste. The director does his job reasonably well, the dialogue is uninspired but not clunky, and Dustin Hoffman has enough charisma to keep us interested in his character, at any rate. It's not really a bad movie. But Warner Brothers has slapped up any old thing and called it a taut thriller - and it certainly isn't that.