Truly Dreadful Film

Really Surprised!

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

No doubt Robert Wise appreciated the realism attempted by Kubrick with 2001: A Space Odyssey. This movie combines the talents of Michael Crichton (based on his book) and Nelson Gidding (screenplay based on the book) and Robert Wise. 2 of those 3 are certified geniuses. Wise's resume includes: The House on Telegraph Hill; The Day the Earth Stood Still; The Haunting; The Sound of Music; The Sand Pebbles; etc. Basically he was Kubrick before Kubrick existed. Crichton of course was an academic; a scientist; a writer; director. Basically a renaissance man. Wise was clever to present the movie as a pseudo-documentary. It's not a movie but a historical document that wasn't supposed to be released. The movie deals with a top-secret military program that potentially has a pure science application. Without posting a spoiler let's just say that weaponizing the Milky Way is terrifying enough. Once you venture beyond our little neighborhood the surprises can be beyond human imagination.

I loved this superb work, and got such a surprise when i first saw it. I would recommend that the reviews are not studied, in part because the film is best viewed as the story unfolds. I found the actors and dialogue so convincing, that i almost felt i was present during the key scenes. Having seen it at least three times, i cannot recommend it enough. Back in 1971 i found it more than educational, which was a nice bonus.

Too bad that a white-knuckle premise is undercut by laborious execution. Seems an experimental space scoop has brought back an alien life form from outside Earth's orbit that has killed a small New Mexico town. The exceptions are an old man and a baby who somehow survived. Now a high-security laboratory set up for investigating such possibilities must determine the nature of the life form before it spreads. A small specialized group of scientists are assigned the earth-shaking task.The first 10-minutes or so are excitingly compelling. However the movie's remainder turns relentlessly inward into a self-enclosed laboratory space that soon stifles the promising beginning. Now I have nothing against technical argot, but 90-minutes or so of mainly analytic biology soon had me looking around my room. Compounding that esoteric dialog is the self-enclosed space of the multi-level lab itself. In short, the dialog seldom strays from scientific jargon while the camera seldom strays from small spaces. Too bad, because the dimension of an outside world is soon lost. And, after all, it's an outside world in all its diversity that is presumably in peril. Had the screenplay given the researchers more personal context, then the visuals could have relieved some of the monotony by cutting away to family or community. Some such would have humanized the race against time. At the same time, the cast conveys little of the crisis's intensity, and that includes the wise-cracking Reid who I guess is supposed to be comedy relief.That's not to say that the movie fails altogether in suspense or involvement. As indicated, the premise itself is loaded with potential and some manages to surface even amid an over-extended run-time and a stifling context. However, the general treatment appears to get carried away in the process.

For sure, the Andromeda Strain has an interesting premise! The inhabitants of a village in the middle of nowhere all die where they stand, but for a newborn and an oldster. The suspect? An alien microscopic life form carried to earth by a returning satellite. Thus a group of scientists is put together, more or less under duress, to investigate events. First at ground zero and later in an underground secret lab somewhere in a desert in Nevada. But after this promising start the movie makers forgot something. Shouldn't they put a timer on the whole thing? Granted they do that, but very late into the movie and even at that point they forget to inform group of investigators until even later because they scientists are incommunicado with the rest of the world. So the drama that is for the grab is lost and what conflicts arise never lead to anything serious that you would expect when disparate people have to work under pressure to save the world from extinction. This missed opportunity is born out by little mistakes, such as the fact that the men all are clean shaven even after days of hard work. In fact the whole movie looks crispy and clean. There is even drama fully cooked and ready when some members start to suspect that the alien life form might have something to do with biological warfare. But that moment of tension sizzle out to nothing. Another conflict arises when the scientists advocate to nuke the village, but the politicians hesitate. But it is hardly an issue that impacts the plot. While it should have as it leads up to a twist in the movie. The movie focuses on the scientific investigation using instruments that look hopelessly dated nowadays. A sizable part of the movie has the team go through a sixteen hour decontamination procedure involving a slow descend through five levels of the underground lab that ought to impress the viewers. And I would agree such painstaking thoroughness is impressive and a pain to watch to. And we then see them do the meticulously scientific research for another big part of the movie, which is again an awesome testimonial to the scientific method, but at times feels as exciting as watching paint dry. Blinking computer screens with unintelligible numbers don't do it for me. It is boring.The b rate actors are unable to add to the tension arch which doesn't mean they do a bad job, but they are just not able to amend for the lack of drama like a Henry Fonda can. He can make any dull line of conversation seem interesting but the actors that are billed here aren't up to it. At times the actors looked nailed to the ground, standing up erect and delivering their lines in an almost monotone voice. So now I really saw what wooden acting looks like. All in all the movie is still watchable while you are doing something else as well. For once this might be a movie that actually might do a lot better when remade. I suspect the novel by Crichton is still good material. Just add some more dialog and drama. All ready to go.