Outbreak (1995)

A weird piece of  trivia- this review has been bouncing around the draft folder for about 2 years or so. It needed a couple of lines to be done and until recently I never would do them. Now its done and I never have to look at it again.

My mother had a huge crush on Kevin Spacey. If he was witty and clever in a film, so much the better. Between The Negotiator, The Ref and this film, Outbreak we could lose her to a daylong triple feature at the drop of a hat.

Outbreak is a kind of grandfather to the semi recent trend of town getting over run by a disease (including Contagion, some zombie films). The film has a small town over run with a disease when an infected monkey gets someone in the town sick. And then he gets more people sick and so on and so on. The Government sends in doctors Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Kevin Spacey to try and find the source of the illness and stop it’s spread. Of course they are under time pressure and things get hairy, so much so that bombing the town is seriously considered and what started as a medical thriller becomes an action film as Hoffman races to stop the town from being leveled.

It’s all utter nonsense and absolute fun. This is the cinematic equivalent of a rollercoaster with all of the twists and turns pulling you along as the great actors keep you focused on the matters at hand.

As for Spacey this was the film that really started to get him noticed. I remember when this film came out almost all of the reviews mentioned how the actor stole the film from the rest of the big name cast. Its some how appropriate since six months after this film was released Spacey would hit super stardom with the Usual Suspects and nothing would ever be the same again.