OUTBREAK (1995)

Thirty years ago this month, acclaimed director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm) gave us a terrifying viral thriller which at the time MIGHT have seemed like pure fiction....but WAS it? :o 

Well regardless it was a big hit and featured a stacked cast featuring Oscar-winners Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, and Cuba Gooding Jr plus Rene Russo and the late, great Donald Sutherland. (How did those last two never receive Oscar nominations??) A brand new deadly virus has travelled from overseas via an innocent monkey who stowed away on a shipping barge....and that monkey has landed in Southern California....and this virus has started to spread around one truly unfortunate isolated small town.  People are dying as the virus mutates and the only folks who can stop it are a team of Army doctors who have to figure out how to find a cure.  It's all very '90's though very scary nonetheless....and remember to wash your hands!    

Host & Editor: Geoff Gershon
Producer: Marlene Gershon

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Transcript

OUTBREAK – 1995

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen

Starring Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, Cuba Gooding Jr, Donald Sutherland, Patrick Dempsey, Zakes Mokae, Malick  Bowens, Susan Lee Hoffman, Benito Martinez, Bruce Jarchow, Michelle Joyner, JT Walsh, and Kevin Spacey

Genre: Viral Thriller

Post-COVID, has this '90's viral thriller aged well OR poorly? 🤔 I can't quite be sure, it depends on which part of it...

- The divorce subplot between Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo is SO clunkily '90's, it honestly feels as if they just simply forgot to add Cary Elwes to the cast as Russo's latest love interest....who would of course have to die horribly in the first hour. 😕

- Donald Sutherland (RIP and my initial reason to rewatch) playing the chilly main villain is such spot-on casting for this particular time period! He's over-the-top yet playing it completely straight which makes it easier to have sond fun with this movie during its ridiculous second half....

- Speaking of the second half, that's when this becomes just a full-blown bombastic '90's action thriller with the admittedly goofy but still engaging pairing of Hoffman (in what has to be his only real action role) and Gooding (in one of his last scrappy supporting roles before he would the Oscar for Jerry Maguire the following year). They're just fun to watch together and the aerial helicopter action is solid enough. :) But it’s VERY clear that by that point, the story has shift into a MUCH more obvious Hollywood direction….

- It's the first 40 or 50 minutes when this is more of a very sober medical thriller which would hold up pretty well today....especially that clever opening credits sequence taking us through the four different levels of Bio-Safety. As a director, Wolfgang is truly exercising his directorial chops with some inventive sequences demonstrating the spread of the disease....that movie theater sequence (yes I squirmed watching this in a theater) and ANOTHER one which I’ll get to in a bit. 

- Admittedly having Kevin Spacey as a prominent player in the cast has NOT aged well, neither is the ghastly haircut his character was saddled with. Honesty though, he's pitch-perfect in this with a solid acid turn as Hoffman's second-in-command in the field and lab. This was also THE peak period for Spacey, he was just in the zone as one of our most charismatic character actors - this was right after he killed it in Swimming With Sharks and just a few months before his '95 breakout in Seven and The Usual Suspects! 

- One of the last true leading man roles for Hoffman and while he's kinda miscast, he's at least giving it his all providing a lot of weight for this subject matter. His bio-scientist is given a couple too many indignant ranks but they never cease to entertain. 

- The disease stuff only feels plausible to a POINT...Mutaba was loosely based on Ebola but it's still VERY much a movie disease with just an ABSURDLY rapid life cycle and high fatality rate! Is it any wonder that so many folks were skeptical of COVID-19 when they've been bread on movie viruses like this one or Rage from 28 Days Later? I mean just because you're not seeing blood GUSH out of the eyes of your loved ones within five minutes…doesn't make a communicable disease any less dangerous 😳

Best Needle-drop (best song cue or score used throughout runtime of film): 

The score for this film is from one of Southern California’s most reliable stalwart film composers over the years and that would be James Newton Howard.  Admittedly it’s not the strongest aspect for this film….this was in the middle of a mixed ‘90’s run for Howard when periodically he would break out with something special like his propulsive score for the otherwise mediocre Grand Canyon and or a genuine banger like the animalistic music he crafted for previous episode Falling Down. (Audio clip) 

At the end of the decade, he would find new inspiration from collaborating with M. Night Shyamalan on The Sixth Sense resulting in a string of pretty inspired scores for that filmmaker.  But for much of this decade, he was doing a lot of action/thriller scores which honestly ALL started to blend together….previous episode The Fugitive which WAS a solid score but if you could tell that one apart from his music for Just Cause, Metro, A Perfect Murder, Primal Fear, Vertical Limit, Dante’s Peak….and THIS one, well you have a better ear than I do.   That said, there’s probably one highlight which occurs about half-way through when the US Military takes over the small California town of Cedar Creek….trucks, tanks, helicopters, tents are set up, it’s all sufficiently terrifying to witness - picture the scary quarantine sequence towards the third act of ET but on a significantly bigger scale.  And Howard’s orchestral score gets a bit bombastic but also tackles some chilling melodies along the way…..it’s truly effective stuff paired up with what we’re seeing on screen, this track is fittingly called, “The Military Arrives.” (Audio clip) 

Wasted Talent (most under-utilized talent involved with film): 

Wow….well if I wanted to be REALLY pick this film apart, I kind of have already stated that I think Rene Russo and Dustin Hoffman are VERY miscast as a newly divorced couple….that whole subplot is likely the weakest aspect of the movie.  However….there are a couple of distinct supporting players who leave SUCH a mark, I would have welcomed more from them.  And let’s start with Michelle Joyner….journeywoman character actress who has done a sporadic amount of mostly TV over the past 30+ years.  But once you see her, you can’t forget her….because she KNOWS how to play some one going through something TRULY horrific no joke.  I’ve seen her TWICE and her scenes are burned in my brain….the first time?  A couple of years before this in previous episode Cliffhanger….yup that film’s BEST sequence, she plays Sarah….yup the one who falls in the beginning. (Audio clip)   

Now she has just a couple of scenes in Outbreak but they are genuinely heartbreaking as she plays a mother who is being escorted away from her household….she’s clearly infected, she can’t even embrace them to say goodbye, and we watch her horror first-hand as she has to leave them….and then be rounded up in a makeshift hospital.  Now I HAVE to think that the producers of this film hired her for this based on her exemplary work from that sequence in Cliffhanger….because she nails it!  (Audio clip) 

And if that wasn’t enough, the tragic payoff for her character of Sherry occurs a couple of scenes later at the end of what is very likely THE best speech of the film…..coming in for the clutch with just ONE scene in the middle of a sterling run, we have the late, great JT Walsh playing the Chief of Staff for the President.  And he is just on fire delivering the details of “Operation Clean Sweep.” (Audio clip) 

This speech is SO well-written it honestly feels as if it came from a more intelligent movie…..and Walsh is just on fire all to the point where he tosses out a bunch of photos of people from Cedar Creek who have died INCLUDING….most notably a stark, shocking B&W photo of Sherry’s face….now blead out, now deceased.  Damn, it has you wondering why we couldn’t see MORE of Walsh in this movie….  (Audio clip)

Trailer Moment (scene or moment that best describes this movie):

As director, Wolfgang finds several inventive ways to visually demonstrate the spread of this virus.  But never moreso than about 40 minutes into the film with a TRULY effective POV shot through the hospital vents showing Hoffman’s Daniels as he comes to a STARTLING realization tracking how Mutaba could have POSSIBLY spread from the isolated part of the hospital to another patient who had been admitted for something completely unrelated.  The camera takes us from ONE shot of Daniel’s looking overhead….to another of him LOOKING aghast upwards on the other end.  Simply put…..the disease has gone airborne. (Audio clip) 

MVP (person or people most responsible for the success of this film):

As flawed as this film is, it has some genuine high-points and it does the job of making the audience truly uncomfortable when it needs to early on….and that’s all Wolfgang.  I didn’t love EVERY genre epic of his – Troy, Shattered, and sorry Air Force One which I always found a bit overrated – but when he was at the top of his game, he was as good as ANY one….among the elite with the McTiernan’s and Verhoeven’s when it came to big budget spectacle for ADULTS.  In the Line of Fire, The Perfect Storm, previous episode Das Boot….yeah I would place this firmly in the middle of his filmography, still not a bad place to be.  For delivering a genuinely effective viral thriller FOR ITS TIME, the late great Wolfgang Petersen is the MVP. (Audio clip)  

Overall Rating: 3.25 stars out of 5

Happy 30th Anniversary to the OTHER highly watchable virus thriller which everyone felt the need to rewatch during the early days of COVID….and no sorry, it’s not as good as Contagion.  How COULD it be? 

Streaming on Prime Video

And that ends another AIR-BORNE review!