Product Description

Catch the fever of one of the great scare stories of our time (Roger Ebert) as Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman race to save life on earth when an unstoppable killer virus hits our shores.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14126 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2008-09-02
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French, German, Spanish
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 127 minutes

Features

• Catch the fever of "one of the great scare stories of our time" (Roger Ebert) as Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman race to save life on earth when an unstoppable killer virus hits our shores. Format: BLU-RAY DISC Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R Age: 883929031993 UPC: 883929031993 Manufacturer No: 1000040995

Amazon.com
When Warner Brothers was unable to secure the rights to Richard Preston's terrifying nonfiction book The Hot Zone (purchased by a rival studio), they took the basic idea of a fatal virus on the loose in the U.S., added Dustin Hoffman and director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot), and produced an unusual thriller--a surprise hit--called Outbreak. The other picture, slated to star Robert Redford and Jodie Foster, fell through. The premise of Outbreak, which owes something to Elia Kazan's 1950 plague-scare movie, Panic in the Streets, is as terrifying as it is timely. As developers slash their way deeper into the previously unexplored tropical rainforests, they are exposed to radically new forms of life, including diseases, that in these days of commonplace international travel could turn into deadly epidemics almost before we know it. Hoffman's character and his estranged wife (Rene Russo) are disease experts called in to identify the unknown killer, which was carried into the country by an illegally smuggled monkey. The best sequence shows the disease spreading--through recycled air on a passenger jet, or a sneeze in a crowded movie theater. The final chase is pretty conventional, but the cast is terrific, including Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr., J.T. Walsh, and Zakes Mokae. --Jim Emerson

From The New Yorker
Wolfgang Petersen's biohazard thriller is a textbook example of Hollywood's ability to make something new look very old and very familiar. The screenplay, by Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool (and five pricey script doctors), invents a rain-forest virus called Motaba, which migrates from Zaire and runs amok in a Northern California town. The virus is a promising villain for an apocalyptic thriller, but the filmmakers keep it contained-locked into an action-movie structure that reduces an unsettling subject to a predictable this-time-it's-personal conflict between a good-guy scientist (Dustin Hoffman) and a bad-guy general (Donald Sutherland). The movie produces a bizarre hybrid strain of suspense: it's a Hot Zone thriller with a Cold War sensibility. Also with Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, and Cuba Goodings, Jr. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker