Outbreak [Blu-ray]

Director: Wolfgang Petersen Wolfgang Petersen

Overview

A handful of scientists struggle to prevent the destruction of a small town -- and possibly the entire country -- in this suspense drama. In the mid-1960s, a deadly virus is discovered in Zaire that wipes out an entire village in 24 hours. Government researchers are brought in to investigate, but the military opts to destroy the village rather than risk further infection. Thirty years later, Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman), an expert on contagious diseases, is called in when the virus re-emerges in Africa. A monkey carrying the bug is smuggled into the U.S., and a suburban California town soon begins to succumb to the illness. Sam scrambles to find an antidote with the help of his ex-wife Robby (Rene Russo), a Center for Disease Control researcher, and their colleague Casey (Kevin Spacey), while Gen. McClintock (Donald Sutherland) has his own reasons for wanting to use bombs to contain the epidemic, and Army surgeon Gen. Ford (Morgan Freeman) is caught in the middle. Outbreak was produced in the hopes of beating the film version of Richard Preston's bestseller The Hot Zone (about a real-life epidemic) into theaters; script problems shelved The Hot Zone, and Outbreak had the infectious disease market to itself.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/02/2008
UPC:	0883929031993
Original Release:	1995
Rating:	R
Source:	Warner Home Video
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	2:08:00
Sales rank:	13,571

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Rene Russo	Robby Keough
Dustin Hoffman	Sam Daniels,Dr. Lisa Aronson
Morgan Freeman	genera¿ Billy Ford
Kevin Spacey	Casey Schuler
Donald Sutherland	genera¿ Donald McClintock
Cuba Gooding Jr.	Maj. Salt
Patrick Dempsey	Jimbo Scott
Daniel Chodos	Actor
Leland Hayward III	Henry Seward
Benito Martinez	Actor
Bruce Jarchow	Dr. Mascelli
Zakes Mokae	Dr. Benjamin Iwabi
Malick Bowens	Dr. Raswani
Dale Dye	Colonel Briggs
Kara Keough	Actor
Gina Menza	Actor
Per Didrik Fasmer	Actor
Michelle Joyner	Sherry Mauldin
Donald Forrest	Actor
Julie Pierce	Actor
Tim Ransom	Tommy Hull
Michelle M. Miller	Actor
Maury Sterling	Actor
Michael Emanuel	Actor
Lucas Dudley	Actor
Roberto Alan Joseph	Actor
Joseph Latimore	Viper Two Co-Pilot
Michael Sottile	Gunner Pilot
Ed Beechner	Gunner
Matthew Saks	Actor,Sergeant Wolf
Diana Bellamy	Mrs Pananides
Lance Kerwin	American Mercenary
Brett Oliver	Actor
Eric Mungai Nguku	Actor
Larry Hine	Actor
Nickolas H. Marshall	Actor
Douglas Hebron	Actor
Jae Woo Lee	Actor
Derek Kim	Actor
Bill Stevenson	Biotest Guard
Kellie Overbey	Alice
Dana Andersen	Actor
Patrica Place	Actor,Mrs Foote
Nicholas Pappone	Actor
Traci Odom	Actor
Herbert Jefferson Jr.	Actor
Thomas Crawford	Actor
Buzz Barbee	Actor
Jenna Byrne	Actor
Brian Reddy	Tracy's Father
Ina Romeo	Actor
Teresa Velarde	Actor
J.J. Chaback	Actor
Carmela Rappazzo	Actor
Kurt Boesen	Actor
Jack Rader	Police Chief Fowler
Robert Rigamonte	Actor
Mimi Doyka	Actor
C. Jack Robinson	Actor
Robert Alan Beuth	George Armistead
Gordon Michaels	Man in LIne
Peter Looney	White House Counsel
Conrad Bachmann	California Governor
Cary J. Pitts	Actor
Cynthia Harrison	Co-anchor
Marcus Hennessy	Actor
Albert Owens	Actor
David Silverbrand	Actor
Julie Araskog	Janet Adams
Frank Rositani	Actor
George Christy	Senator
Bruce Isacson	Actor
Marilyn Brandt	Actor
Philip Handy	Actor
J.T. Walsh	Actor
Joe Baker	Actor
Daniel Chodes	Rudy Alvarez
Dana Anderson	Corinne
Mark Brown	Officer
Jim Antonio	Dr. Drew Reynolds
James Howard	Composer

Technical Credits

Laurence Dworet

Robert Roy Pool

Wolfgang Petersen	Director,Producer
Arnold Kopelson	Producer,Executive Producer
Gail Katz	Producer
Laurence Dworet	Screenwriter
Robert Roy Pool	Screenwriter
Janet Hirshenson	Casting
Jane Jenkins	Casting
Duncan Henderson	Executive Producer
Helen Ostenberg Elswit	Special Effects
John Frazier	Special Effects
Mark Vago	Special Effects
Keith Tellez	Stunts
Buddy Van Horn	Stunts
Michael Burke	Special Effects

Editorial Reviews

Morgan Freeman isn't the star of Outbreak, but his performance, and the legerdemain of director Wolfgang Petersen, make this noteworthy as a character study and a suspense thriller. Petersen, the director of Das Boot, In the Line of Fire, and The Perfect Storm, is an old hand at mixing characterization and action. What is pleasantly surprising about Petersen's direction (and the script by Robert Roy Poole) is how smoothly both manage a shift from a gripping, almost documentary depiction of the horrors of a biological weapon run amuck to a suspenseful, action movie-ish finish. Petersen -- through stars Dustin Hoffman, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Kevin Spacey -- shows the terrible anguish that this plague can wreak on a small California town. For more than an hour, Petersen illuminates the terrible choices the scientists and politicians face as the plague spreads. These sequences are capped by a powerful cameo from an uncredited J.T. Walsh as a furious and highly scrupulous White House chief of staff who forces the people deciding to firebomb the town to look at pictures of the people they will be killing. The action portion of the movie is more melodramatic, and perhaps less successful (Hoffman's banter with Gooding seems forced), but comes as a relief after the gloom of the first hour. As the general who helped launch the weapon and must contain it, Freeman shows the dilemma of a good man caught in a nightmarish web of events.

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