‘General, with all due respect, fuck you, sir…’
I’m not going to use this opening paragraph to once again marvel at the bizarre trajectory of German director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, The NeverEnding Story, Air Force One, Troy… make it make sense) but I will pause a moment to consider the humble ’90s disaster movie. This was the decade that brought us Armageddon, Deep Impact, Twister, Volcano and Independence Day. Heady days indeed. Outbreak is a strange film in as much as on the one hand it tries to match the scale of outright disaster suggested by those other movies, but it also tries to be a serious environmental thriller in the vein of Contagion. In the end, it does neither but does so in a way that is so stylish and entertaining that it never matters how successful the film’s aims are…
An African monkey spreads a deadly virus to a Californian town. Dustin Hoffman and Cuba Gooding Jr. must fight the virus itself, the never-ending onrush of Father Time and a number of bad actors (in the metaphorical sense – not the literal sense) in order to save humanity from disaster. Donald Sutherland and Morgan Freeman symbolise the heartless relentlessness of the American military while Rene Russo is the Holly Gennaro to Hoffman’s John McClane. Kevin Spacey is also there swanning around cracking jokes like he’s at a cocktail party rather than a secure governmental compound.
The first half of Outbreak is excellent. The disease itself is suitably horrifying, The moral implications of containing the outbreak are severe. The cast fully commits whilst also maintaining an awareness of the fact that they are essentially creating quite a silly movie. Hoffman is particularly enjoyable. He never really convinces as a military man but he’s utterly captivating nevertheless. The problem is the third act. Once the film becomes a generic RACE AGAINST TIME, the film loses some of its charm, despite the best efforts of Sutherland and Hoffman to camp things up.
Outbreak is perhaps not bombastic enough to match the real upper echelon of the ’90s disaster movie oeuvre, but it’s still an utterly gripping movie that is also a lot of fun. Highly recommended for fans of ’90s cinema.