Getting the Bugs Out

摘要

You could do a history of movies based on threats to mankind: gangsters, war, the bomb, aliens. The next major cycle may be about the smallest and scariest menaces: viruses. Outbreak is the first thriller to deal with the increasingly lethal and proliferating microbe mafia. Another project, "Crisis in the Hot Zone," starring Robert Redford and Jodie Foster, succumbed to the deadly E virus: ego. Both its stars wanted to be the hero. No such problem with "Outbreak," since Dustin Hoffman is a much bigger star than Rene Russo. They play a divorced couple, both experts in infectious diseases, fighting the mysterious Motaba virus that comes out of Africa via a smuggled monkey and infects the entire town of Cedar Creek, Calif.