"Outbreak" is a movie that is gripping and timely every time you see it, and I've watched it a bunch over the years. It's focused on a Ebola type outbreak in a little town in California (it is filmed in Mendocino) and how the strain of virus got here from Africa. All the science is fascinating, though simplified a bit, and the story and characters keep us engaged. Dustin Hoffman heads a great cast with Rene Russo as his exwife who is leaving for the CDC in Atlanta, but gets caught up in this new, deadly mystery, Donald Sutherland as an army general who tries to keep Hoffman from finding out that he is responsible for not reporting the virus years ago, Morgan Freeman as Hoffman's immediate boss, who is conflicted, and Kevin Spacey as an army doctor and best friends with Hoffman. Cuba Gooding plays a new army scientist who goes out on a limb to help Hoffman capture the carrier animal and develop an antidote. There is a terrific mix of humor, high tension, villains, chase scenes and romance, plus two adorable dogs Hoffman and Russo fight over. Everyone almost dies, but most are saved, and the good guys win.
The film has a theater scene of germs spreading as a person coughs that is classic; worth your time by itself. There is another on an airplane, where Patrick Dempsey, who is the person who brings the animal into the country illegally, which will convince you to drive yourself instead of fly and not pick up any hitchhikers. The scene of the little girl befriending the infected animal is pretty nail biting as well. I'm always amazed that Hoffman and Russo work as a couple as well as they do. Hoffman does adorable pretty darned well when he chooses to, and you feel they have a life and history worth saving. At least for the sake of the dogs.
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