Revisão do filme flare

Film Review

Outbreak

Whitney Boatright 09/25/2007

Synopsis:

The single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance on the planet is a virus.”

—Joshua Lederberg, Nobel laureate

This quote opens the movie and provides the theme for the movie, which is essentially

the rights of the few versus the good of the many.

The film opens in Motaba River Valley, Zaire in 1967 where a deadly hemorrhagic fever

has savagely attacked a mercenary camp. United States Generals McClintock and Ford, in order

to keep the virus a secret, use a bomb to wipe out the camp.

Cut to the mid-90’s. Motaba Virus has struck again in Africa. Colonel Sam Daniels

(Dustin Hoffman) of USAMRIID, who has no idea Motaba Virus even exists, is sent to

investigate with his crew which includes Major Kasey Schuler (Kevin Spacey), his friend and

experienced military doctor/virologist, and Major Salt (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), a confident rookie

who Kasey tries to shake up by describing the effects of hemorrhagic fever. The men arrive in

Motaba River Valley, Zaire and see the destruction that Motaba Virus has wrought upon a

village. Major Salt, despite his declarations that he could handle seeing hemorrhagic fever in

person, begins to panic at the sightof the victims and has to remove his mask in order to vomit.

Luckily, a man appears and tells Sam that the virus is not airborne but was spread through well

water. The man also tells Sam that the disease kills in a few days and the mortality rate is 100%.

On the plane back, Sam says thatalthough the disease is contained it is the “scariest son of a

_______ he has ever seen.”

Sam tries to get his commander General Ford toissue an alert. Ford refuses to issue an

alert. Ford justifies his decision to Sam by saying that it kills too quickly for people to spread it

around. Ford was involved in the '67 outbreak in Zaire, and thus has other motivations than those

he represented to Sam in not ordering the alert.

General Ford could not be more wrong as a monkey from Africa, the host of Motaba

Virus, is in the United States and outbreaks occur in Boston and Cedar Creek, California. While

the Boston outbreak is contained, a horrible outbreak occurs in Cedar Creek because the Cedar

Creek virus is airborne (the theory being not that the virus mutated but that the host carries both

viruses).

Sam, Kasey, Salt, and Robby (Sam’s ex-wife,a doctor with the CDC) desperately try to

find the host animal so that they can find a cure. In the process, Kasey and Robby become

infected. Sam and Salt eventually find the host but later discover that the U.S. military is not

concerned with saving Cedar Creek, they are concerned withsaving a powerful biological

weapon and the military has already convinced the President to bomb Cedar Creek (Operation

Clean Sweep) as they did in Africa 30 years ago. The military has not told the President about

the anti-serum, and he assumes that the bombing isnecessary to prevent millions of deaths from

the spread of this disease.

Sam must stop the bombing of Cedar Creek so he can save his ex-wife, whom he still

loves, and the citizens of Cedar Creek.

Review:

This film was an excellent illustration of how the social compact theory might apply if a

deadly infectious disease like Motabawas to affect the United States.

I think that many lay personsnot acquainted with constitutional law and the social

compact theory might find this film unrealistic. There is a scene where some Cedar Creek

citizens try to escape the town in their vehicles, and one (the car that shoots at the helicopter) is

shot by military helicopters. Most people assume that the military cannot do that, that citizens

have rights. What most people do not realize is that something like that is entirely possible if not

probable in a situation like the one in this movie. Here the conduct of the military was probably

justified, the fleeing citizens were posing an identified actual threat to the public health of

America, and it was clear that the citizens in the car that was shooting were not going to stop, but

were going to force their way out and the measurestaken by the military were necessary. On the

other hand, this scene illustrates the potential result of military-law enforcement among civilians.

Clean Sweep is a different story. At the beginning of the movie, Sam said that the virus

has a short incubation period and if people do not get sick within 24 hours then they will not get

sick. The film made it look as if days passed between the Cedar Creek outbreak and the time that

the military was going to initiateClean Sweep. If anyone had gotten out, then the government

would have probably known, as the nation was on high alert. It seemed unnecessary to