‘Outbreak’ Should Have Stuck With Realism For True Suspense

The first half of the new disease powered “Outbreak” is wonderful. It’s a tense action film with no violence and an edge that many recent thrillers haven’t achieved with shootouts and car chases.

But sadly, the filmmakers underestimated the intelligence of our filmgoers, and the second act is a more traditional thriller. Among the familiar elements are: helicopter chases, car chases, ruthless renegade military types and some sappy personal testimony.

If only writers Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool had kept “Outbreak” in the bounds of realistic suspense that evolves out of the plot, not flashy “action” sequences, this film would be a true winner.

The story has an African monkey carrying a virus shipped to the small town of Cedar Creek, Calif., to be sold at a pet store. The virus is a modern plague: it’s easily transmitted and destroys a person internally in under 24 hours. The outbreak of this virus quickly draws the attention of infectious disease experts, led by Dr. Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman) and his ex-wife, Dr. Robby Keough (Rene Russo). As they try to gather information about the organism, where it originated and how to cure it, they butt heads with shady military officers with something to hide.

For a while, “Outbreak” chronicles with terrifying ferocity the spread of the disease and its effects. At first we are led to a path that illustrates the virus being passed by one person to another: a guy who handles the monkey, his girlfriend, a doctor who comes in contact with infected blood. We can trace the path until, in one scene, countless people at a movie theater become infected from, as we see in some grisly special effects, a man coughing.

The initial response by the military to the outbreak is scaringly realistic. Cedar Creek is quarantined and martial law is imposed. Soon tents and makeshift camps are constructed for those sick or dying, while others are ordered to stay in their homes. The acting all around is pretty good by the entire cast, which includes Morgan Freeman and Cuba Gooding Jr. But the real tension that “Outbreak” emits is in the first half, where the focus is the disease and the way it spreads. It’s no wonder that the scariest part of the film was when the man next to me coughed.

Grade: B