Truly Dreadful Film

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I saw this TV movie as part of a documentary series on Catalan TV which specialises in docudrama and I'm still a bit confused as to which genre it belongs. Having said that, the film tells remarkably well the gripping story of how Howard Florey, Ernst Boris Chain and Norman Heatley developed penicillin between 1938 and 1942. This was after reading the paper in which Alexander Fleming made public his work with the the mould Penicillium notatum (in 1928). The film's clear aim is to honour Florey and his research team, painting a somewhat egotistic portrait of Fleming. The film transmits very well the despair of patients suffering from incurable infections before antibiotics became household items, aided by very efficient work by the make-up artists. It's peculiar to see Dominic West, usually an action man, play the Australian scientist Howard Florey yet he does very well and the film does quite fulfill its aim as a lesson in the history of science.