This plague thriller threatens our immune system with little more than raging deja vu--with its resemblance to other merciless-microbes movies, including big-budget items like OUTBREAK and low-budget schlock like IRON EAGLE 4.
Headed for BBI, a top security lab in Israel, a plane load of scientists is intercepted and annihilated so that a group of anarchists can assume their identities. When UN peacekeeper Sgt. Dutton Hatfield (Jeff Speakman) greets the contingent led by wily Colonel Baron (Ron Silver), he doesn't
realize Baron plans to extort a half-billion dollars under threat of unleashing BBI's deadly chemical warfare strain. After Baron and his troops wipe out BBI personnel, only three people can throw a monkey-wrench into Baron's plot to hold the world hostage: Hatfield; Ira (Idan Alterman), a lowly
security guard; and Dr. Allie Levin (Rochelle Swanson), a research genius who whisks away an antidote to the bio-nightmare.
With the cooperation of inside man Dr. Berg (Yehudi Efroni), Baron kills more hostages and forces back Israeli commandos led by Colonel Gideon (Dan Turjeman). Rescuing Dr. Levin during the takeover of the facility and bedeviling Baron's assassin squad, Hatfield barely escapes incineration in a
basement escape tunnel. Although Levin blocks surveillance transmissions, Baron kills Dr. Berg with nerve gas and tricks Hatfield out of the chemical warfare canister in exchange for a hostage. In a double cross, Baron orders the hostage slaughtered. Boarding an escape bus with Dr. Levin, three
hostages, and his enforcer Ramon (Jack Adelist), Baron smugly drives toward freedom until Hatfield's helicopter intercepts the bus. Too late for the hostages who are killed in the melee, Hatfield saves Dr. Levin and the canister and slays Ramon. After Baron's bus plows into fuel canisters, Colonel
Gideon shoots down Baron's just-arrived agent, enabling a wounded Hatfield to scotch Baron's pestilence plot.
Dedicated to mayhem in all its forms, DEADLY OUTBREAK is practically a filmic textbook on ways to destroy human life, but it lacks the escapist punch of some other direct-to-videos. Speakman's martial artistry is as flexible and crowd-pleasing as ever, but he's wasting his charm on a lackluster
vehicle. Many action spectaculars demonstrate a similar disregard for humanity, but most of these direct-to-videos employ tongue-in-cheek undercurrents to float the rampant destruction to a cartoon level. DEADLY OUTBREAK is submerged in its own violence; because there's no compensatory directorial
eclat or challenging screenplay, the nastiness quickly curdles. (Graphic violence, extreme profanity, sexual situations, adult situations.) leave a comment
