Pandemic (2007)

Virus themed movies tend to follow the same formula, and for that reason I always struggle to enjoy them as I already know exactly how it's going to play out.With an all star cast including Tiffani Thiessen, French Stewart, Faye Dunaway, Eric Roberts to name just a few they pull out all the stops and a couple give career best performances.Telling the story of a new virus outbreak and how it breaks containment and spreads through Los Angeles like wildfire.Standing at almost three hours in length nobody can say the movie isn't thorough. With fantastic character development, decent writing and a competent cast this rises above most films of this sub genre.Thiessen surprisingly delivers like I've never seen her do so before and even Roberts is less hammy than usual.I enjoyed this, for all it's flaws it's a well made film.The Good:Cast do a great jobWell writtenMovie length really helps no endThe Bad:A lot of it you'll have seen beforeSpano is still stupidly unlikeableThings I Learnt From This Movie:Gun toting right wing militia types doing stupid things?! LIES!

It seem like a low budget version of the Steven Soderbergh picture, Contagion Like the Soderbergh movie, it has an ensemble cast, but not as all-star as Contagion, unless your huge fans of Tiffani Thiessen(I was more into Jesse Spano), French Stewart of Third rock and low budget movie icon, Eric Roberts. Faye Dunaway is also in the made for TV film.The cast of characters have to deal with a virus coming from Australia that landed in Los Angeles. Pandemic is quite long which make me think that it may have been a miniseries packaged on DVD as a movie, but in a way that help to weave out a full fledge story without having to worry about missing a few elements of the story and the subplots, which were compelling.Thumbs up for me.

Given any good story you need a good topic, premise, plot, focus and character. Given a story of scientific and legal in nature a writer must have good familiarity in these realm. He has none of it. It's a made for t.v. show. Given a good story line, most amateur writing will focus on too many characters, in this case, a wanted criminal, a rifle crazed man, a rogue FBI agent, two politicians competing for power, an all powerful CDC officer who don't really have a power, and the not too serious emergency response team. Characters are cardboard cliché', a plot whose ending found a cure for her daughter who got Riptide? The premise is too unbelievable, the plot lacks focus. This writer should watch more blockbusters. Originally one of the best movie Rwanda Hotel had too many characters, until the writer found out and decided to focus on one man. Most movies are focused on relatively few major actor not exceeding 2-3. Take Something's Gotta Give, Jerry Maguire, Rain Man, Die Hard, for example focused on relatively few characters, mostly 2-3 making up 80% of the movie screen. And those characters are a strong one, take the Dark Knight, the Joker, Batman, Superman, Snow White, etc. Given the basics, there is problem about the lack of understanding protocols and laws. The CDC, just can't walk around everywhere, certain laws have to be considered when an act of quarantine is considered. For one thing, the first law is Title 42 United States Code Section 264 (Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act) gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) responsibility for preventing the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States and within the United States and its territories/possessions. The second issue of the President, by Executive Order, which is Under the procedures required under the PHS Act, the list of diseases for which quarantine is authorized must first be specified in an Executive Order of the President, on recommendation of the HHS Secretary. By amending the list to include types of influenza that either cause or have the potential to cause a pandemic. As to the knowledge of Tamifl and ways or eradicating the virus, where are sanitation procedures, in place? The seriousness of quarantine, the authority's control over the situation, the closing of public places, the media frenzy into the area, the military action in closing off the area, instead of CDC giving the "idea" of closing off the region. The sudden shock of death. The movie is like there is fire in the house, and people are walking out of the house while they are sleepwalking. If there's any problem about making movies, it's the crappy writing I see all the time. To prevent this I believe that each scenes or plots are organized into modules where parts can be deleted, and characters are focused only 2-3 character through an entire time line of events, and the methodology of quarantine control, should ignore the obvious solution such as vaccines, someone who is immunized to the disease, and other cliché's so common in virus plagued. And in any T.V. drama, people should start being more serious of the circumstances instead of just waking in their sleep. In any event H3N7 virus and other things are interesting, but sanitation, and organized quarantine procedures the writer has difficult understanding the magnitude of the problem, as in most t.v. shows I have seen. To make a good story, the character must huff and puff until the house is blown down. It doesn't start by just sleep walking around the house either.

I should start by confessing that I didn't last the distance on this movie - I bailed when we got to the traditional gooey sentimental bits - but I can't resist a good disaster movie. This was not one of them.The start was not promising. Note to producers - if you want to show someone just coming out of the water from surfing, make sure there's something more than a six inch break in the background. There's actually very little surfing in far North Queensland because the Great Barrier Reef stops the swell from coming in. Second note to producers - there is no way you could get from far North Queensland to Sydney by car in 8 hours.After that, things got a little better. A bit of character establishment on the plane (so we care about them later when they keel over) though I do wonder why there only seemed to be one stewardess. The landing, unloading of body and passengers and the setting up of the ERC was all low key and convincing. The hovering media rang true but I cannot believe that the Head of the CDC would be so incompetent at handling them.Then it started to get gooey and silly. Gangsters being broken out with no security to be seen. Nieces having to take taxis and thus getting the virus because career-oriented mothers and aunts can't spare the time to pick her up (and can I say that the niece got to the coughing up blood stage remarkably fast). Touching farewells between FBI colleagues - "Hey, you're going to die (maybe he didn't), it's been nice knowing you."That was when I gave a less than touching farewell to this movie.