Mark Hall (James Olson) meets Medcom operator Karen Anson (Paula Kelly). One of the most prescient scenes comes when Dr. Most of the action takes place at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where the chosen scientists of Project Scoop try to identify and combat this mysterious contamination. Released three years after Stanley Kubrick’s space masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain has a similar pace, which adds to the suspense as the climax builds. research satellite carrying an extraterrestrial microscopic organism “larger than a virus” crashes into the small town of Piedmont, New Mexico, killing everyone there but a 6-month-old baby and a “69-year-old Sterno drinker with an ulcer.” The impact the alien microbe has on humans is so powerful it “cuts them down in mid-stride,” according to a scientist who surveys the scene. Ruth Leavitt (Kate Reid): “This is a great place to grow pot,” “I never liked red lights – reminds me of my years in a bordello,” and “establishment is gonna fall down and go ‘boom.’”ĭirected by Robert Wise (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Haunting), The Andromeda Strain starts when a U.S. Crichton’s best ingredients are here: a suspenseful and believable premise, colorful, complicated characters, and an abundance of one-liners, many of which belong to Dr. When I mentioned this column to my dad, he recommended that I include this virus-related sci-fi thriller by a young Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, Westworld). It’s also a bit of a love story, although I wouldn’t say there are sparks between Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo. It’s one billionth our size, and it’s beating us.Ĭasey: What do you want to do? Take it out to dinner?ĭirected by Wolfgang Petersen (Air Force One, Troy) Outbreak is more of an action-adventure thriller than a plausible drama. Sam: Come on, Casey, you have to love its simplicity. There is an exchange between Major Casey Schuler (Kevin Spacey trying too hard to be cool) and Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman) that captures our current reality (and current attitude) in a nutshell: The only way to shut it down is to isolate those who are sick and try to wipe out the virus once and for all.
No one wants to believe the reality of the crisis, but denial doesn’t solve a thing. Just like in Wuhan, the whistleblower was persecuted. Hoffman’s character, Sam, experiences this firsthand. So many of us originally did not believe the fear to be justified. Nevertheless, COVID-19 is a clear threat, especially when we live in a nation that spreads fear as much – if not more – than it does microbes. In Outbreak, the fast-acting Motaba virus has a mortality rate of 100 percent, whereas the coronavirus has a far less threatening mortality rate (for those 80 and older, the coronavirus mortality rate is around three percent worldwide). Currently a Top 10 watch on Netflix, Outbreak is nostalgic, prescient, and puts our current crisis into perspective.
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