Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6049 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-05-11
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Turkish, Hungarian, Polish, Icelandic, Arabic, Croatian, Czech, Greek
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 123 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
When Warner Brothers was unable to secure the rights to Richard Preston's terrifying non-fiction book The Hot Zone (purchased by a rival studio), they took the basic idea of a fatal virus on the loose in the US, 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 cinema. 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

Special Features
Wide Screen
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1
Interactive Menus
Production Notes
Scene Access
Arabic\Croatian\Czech\English\Greek\Hungarian\Icelandic\Polish\Turkish

Synopsis
In director Wolfgang Petersen's fast-paced, intelligently written thriller, Dustin Hoffman plays Col. Sam Daniels, an expert on infectious diseases who is called in to study the outbreak of a deadly illness in Zaire. He finds a virus that spreads so quickly it could wipe out an entire nation in just a few weeks, and he believes that it might have spread to the United States. With the help of his ex-wife (Rene Russo), who works at the Centers for Disease Control, Daniels tracks the virus to the quiet seaside town of Cedar Creek, California. His superiors' reticence to help begins to raise questions in Daniels's mind, and he must find a cure before a panicky U.S. army general decides to kill the town's populace in order to save the world. The all-star cast includes Hoffman, Russo, Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland, Morgan Freeman, and Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Customer Reviews

Never trust the military
When I first saw this movie, I didn't know what to expect. I was very happy that I saw this but it had a lot of thematic and freaky elements. Dustin Hoffman and everybody else in the cast is really good and their performances were cool. A bunch of big named stars in this made this disease movie work. It showed how good the army would do if they had a disease that had an outbreak and it shows what risks they would take.

Overall the whole movie is really cool. The acting was great and the direction is good, too.

One of my favourite films of all time?!
Im not going to analyse the entire film and spoil the storyline becos i believe the storyline is so strong and captivating it makes the movie great!!dustin hoffman and rene russo make an unusual but utterly perfect couple. The film has enuf romance to keep us girls hopeful and enuf action to keep the boys happy with some good humour thrown in for good measure. Buy this movie, u wont be disappointed.

A Brilliant Thriller
I went to see Outbreak at the cinema on the day of it's release and I was thoroughly impressed from start to finish, coincidentally I saw the trailer to it the day before watching another film at the cinema and me and my friend both agreed that we had to see this film. I liked all the main actors in it and I also enjoy the films of Wolfgang Petersen, the director and also James Newton Howard's score was brilliant and although he's scored bigger films like The Fugitive and King Kong among others this is still one of my personal top choices. If I had to pick one actor as the best in this then I would have to say that my choice would be Donald Sutherland for not only is he a brilliant actor but he also makes an excellent villain in films. To end this review I will say watch this film to anyone who has not seen it yet as it is one worth watching.