Outbreak (1995)

Film of 2012 #45

Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Cuba Gooding Jnr and an Infected monkey, what is not to like about this film? If you have seen the recent Contagion which I looked at here, then this is the predecessor to that done on a different scale. It takes the idea of a monkey illegally brought into the country and given to Patrick Dempsey and subsequently released into the wild and the fact that this monkey carries a highly infectious, highly deadly disease that through the course of a serious of unfortunate events goes airborne and spreads through a small US town. You follow Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo a recently separated couple, he works for the Army and she is at the Centre of Disease Control and they are both involved in doing the same job, identifying, curing and controlling Infectious diseases.

This is small scale compared to Contagion as it focuses on a small town and only a few characters and does not explore the larger implications but does have a slight feel of the Crazies as you see a lot from the military's point of view and the lengths they are willing to go to contain the disease. You have an excellent supporting cast with Donald Sutherland, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey. Another film that has flaws and falls in to the trap of if you think about the timescales too much you realise it is a movie based requirement to make the timescales impossible and the likelihood of success impossible which makes it more tense and exciting from a film watching perspective but logical brains cannot always accept this and just think of as ridiculous.

I enjoy this and wish that Cuba Gooding Jnr had done more roles like this as he is really likeable and I always want him to succeed in whatever role he is in. This film in itself is good if you like the idea of an outbreak and seeing where it can spread to and if you enjoyed Contagion it is worth revisiting this film which I give a 3 star recommend.

RED (2010)

This comic book adaptation sees Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren as retired operatives that come out or retirement when a Black-ops team invade Bruce Willis; home and try to kill him. It is a hilarious action comedy that brings together a stellar cast to romp through some serious explosions and action sequences.

I have to say that I was looking forward to seeing this film, as a non-comic book reader I had never heard of the series before the film and had not seen that much about it. I just thin that the cast alone was worth watching and seeing what they could do with a basically solid story idea. The action and acting did not disappoint me I have to say that there were some set ups and ideas that made me laugh out loud, the love stories are actually something special.

This is a solid recommend from me and I hope that if you have not seen it then you will give it the time it is well worth it and funny enough to pass the 2 hour running time, 4 shinning stars from me.

Along Came a Spider (2001)

I caught this film one night on the TV and thought it has Morgan Freeman, why not give it a go. Could not really see the point of it, it's an adaption from the Alex Cross books and the start has a scene where a car crashes and you can imagine on paper it reads quite engrossing and tense on film it looked silly.

The whole story has some interesting twists and turns but in today's modern world of twists nothing was really that surprising to me, I thought the acting and direction was fine and the story was not to bad but there are a couple of leaps of faith and really the whole point of the exercise from everybody is a but questionable as to why they do what they do.

I will give it 2 stars as there is a few famous people who do nothing wrong in it and it is more to do with the amount of films I have seen that make me see what they do as repetitive and cliched.