Contaminated Man (2000)

Fresh and Exciting

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I couldn't agree more with the other comment, it's like Falling down. Peter Weller is OK and William Hurt great as always, except in Lost in Space. This is a good movie. With pretty good performances. Very recommendable. If you like Falling down you're going to enjoy this one. 8 of 10

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All CostsIf you like your films either direct-to-video or limited release,Anthony Hickox is a generally reliable guy.His previous two Dolph Lundgren films,Storm Catcher and Jill Rips,have been proof of this.But the one thing that bogged those two films down,his mysterious quiet audio dubbing,is just one of many things that bog this plodding hash.The mighty really have fallen in the case of Peter Weller.One time lead star of quite possibly the greatest film of all time,Robocop,he has now been reduced to playing a bumbling menace who spends the majority of the film jarringly carrying some model airplane around with him.William Hurt and Natasha McElhone,one time big screen actors,should also be noted in nauseatingly stereotypical,ineffective roles as the action hero and romantic interest respectively.Throw into this a tired,cliche ridden killer virus story (with the government corruption and everything)which relies too heavily on subtitles at the beginning and all you have to occupy your time is the beautiful photography of the snow capped hills.And you didn't mean to spend an hour and a half watching that.*

The story has been told before. A deadly disease is spreading around... But the extra in this film is Peter Weller, his interpretation of Muller on the run is real. He is indeed a desperate person just going home to see his child. This person could be working next to you.

Now I had the pleasure of first viewing Contaminated Man when it premiered on TV back in December of 2000.An infectious disease expert (William Hurt) looses his family when an unknown disease enters his home and kills them. Now some years later he is now in Russia or someplace. I'm not sure where exactly, all I know is it takes place somewhere in that area. Anyway, because of budget cutbacks at an infectious disease laboratory, they are forced to lay off most of their workers. One of them, a disgruntled security guard named Joseph Muller (played Peter Weller, best known for his role as the indestructible Robocop) goes in there and demands that they give him his job back. He needs this job because he is divorced and he needs it to pay child support. So he goes in there, a fight breaks out, and some things get knocked over, dangerous things. It's soon discovered that Muller has been infected with a deadly pathogen. In fact it's so deadly, one drop of his blood will kill a person in matter of seconds. Soon word gets out and the disease expert (Hurt) is called in to investigate and he later teamed up with an American reporter. Now Muller is determined to get home to see his wife and son and will stop at nothing even if he has to infect the entire Russian population.Now as I said before this film is a lot like Falling Down. We have a disturbed person (Weller here, Michael Douglas in Falling Down) who will stop at nothing to accomplish there goal even if they have to kill a few people in the process. Next we have a hero-type person (Hurt here, Robert Duvall in Falling Down) who is both sympathetic and determined to stop the antagonist.Contaminated Man is in fact a very good film with a good story line and some very good performances.8/10