Customer Reviews

Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This made for TV flick certainly makes an impact on just how devastating a pandemic of the dreaded bird flu could impact the world. That's the film's main problem--it is so heavy handed and somber that it doesn't really flesh out the storylines to make us care for the people. It's almost like a documentary; nothing really "happens."
Joely Richardson is lovely but her performance is lifeless; Scott Cohen fares a little better as the obsessed governor of Virginia; and Stacy Keach is appropriately bureaucratic. Ann Cusack takes acting honors, however, as the widow of the businessman responsible for bringing the virus into America. She evokes a lot of sympathy as a wife and mother who takes charge when things get really bad.
A dark, disturbing if ultimately uneventful movie, though.

"Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America" is a deliberate attempt to sensationalize a current events story, combine it with fearmongering and horrible overacting, and present it on television as the disaster of the week just in time for the May sweeps. The film begins plausibly enough with a single businessman bringing the H5N1 virus back from China and it spreading across the country at lightning speed with special thanks to air travel as a vector. Despite the actual experience of avian flu in North America, the film features extensive quarantines imposed, total social breakdown, all insurance companies going bankrupt, rednecks hijacking a military vaccine convoy, starvation, and the like. Certainly widespread flu is nothing to take lightly, but this movie features over-the-top hysteria that is totally unjustified, and features horrible over-emoting throughout, although it still has time for a demographically-driven romantic subplot and dance on a rooftop amidst the death, mass unmarked graves, and charges of racism against an unlikable and obstreperous governor.

The only big-name actor in the cast is Stacy Keach, who turns in by far the best performance of the film, although I can't imagine why he ever signed on to this project. The film is remarkably downbeat, and I do give the filmmakers credit for staying true to their dream of making an utterly bleak film. Obviously the flu virus mutates over time, but this strain mutates very quickly and with grossly increasing lethality. When we finally get to the end of the film a team of US experts discover a new mutation that has killed all the villagers in regions of Angola, no doubt paving the way for extinction of the human race. One of several problems I have with the film is how these experts in Angola talk among themselves: one actually has to lecture the others that their flu shots may not protect them due to mutations in the H5N1 virus. You would think that if these were the best and brightest virologists and epidemiologists on the planet that they would grasp basic information known to high schoolers taking a biology class. Likewise I have issues with the constantly reinforced concept that everyone (well, everyone except one child, anyway) dies from the flu. Even in the most severe outbreaks that has never occurred. Not to say that it couldn't, but that the level of panic that this movie wants us to attain is historically completely unjustified.

The biggest problem for me wasn't that I didn't think the movie was scientifically credible (I think influenza pandemics can be very severe, although I have reservations about the scope of this presentation; it's unlikely though not statistically impossible.) My biggest problem with the movie is that it's ponderous, preachy, and poorly acted. With the exception of Stacy Keach, there really isn't much to redeem this movie, although I do give it two stars for attempting to tackle the difficult subject of a cataclysmic medical event.

As an aside, I watched this and the wholly unrelated and grossly inferior "Flu Birds" as a double feature. While I found "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America" to be boring and plodding, it is exponentially better than the horror that is "Flu Birds." While this movie attempts to treat a serious subject somberly, "Flu Birds" is simply an excuse for a excrementally bad horror movie about killer birds. I recommend this double feature only to the truly cinematically hardened.

It is true that it showed almost like a documentary; and I liked that about this movie. Many disaster movies focus on several troubled relationship and the main theme of the disaster is only a back drop; not so with this film. After watching this movie, I actually felt that I knew more about avion flu and how various government agencies MIGHT deal with the problems that develop.

I have been researching the avian H5N1 flu for quite a while now, and was impressed with this film's accuracy. I expected this film to be the usual Hollywood treatment where the pretty doctor comes up with the Magic Vaccine at the last minute. I was pleased to be wrong. The statistics were right on, and it gave an accurate view of how the government in its arrogance will be slow to react when the flu finally mutates so that it will be passed easily from human to human.

Scenes were well-crafted in regards to bare grocery shelves, the panic buying that ensues when deliveries ARE made, and how the garbage will pile up when the trash collectors are not available.

I was impressed with the emphasis on the need for neighbors to pull together to make it through the crisis, and how one individual can make the difference.

I do take issue where the film implies that virtually everyone who catches the flu will die. Other than the one boy (I've forgotten his name) EVERYBODY shown who contacts the flu dies.

One last thing that stood out for me was that this movie did not put a "happy face" on the situation, but ends with the grim reality that nature does not fit in a tidy little box where things are resolved in 2 hours minus commercials.

As they emphasised in the movie, it's not a matter of "if," but "when." I hope people take this film to heart and make preparations NOW, while there is still timwe to prepare. I would recommend that a good starting point would be The Bird Flu Preparedness Planner by Grattan Woodson. I have already given this book a 5-star review, and recommend it without qualification. Naturally, it is available through Amazon.

This movie was more of a documentary with several unrealistic scenarios. It was heavy on scary without being really scary.

I gave it 4 stars for the interesting storyline subplot which compared how two women handled the outbreak with totally DIFFERENT attitudes - the saint turns into a selfish bitch and the pathetic crybaby turns into a hero.

WARNING MOVIE SPOILERS

In the beginning of the film, Chinese people who live in close quarters with chickens catch a mutated form of bird flu. This strain is more lethal than most. A little Chinese girl who doesn't want her chicken killed by health authorities keeps it hidden and apparently that chicken gives it to the girl's father who spreads it to an American man there to visit his factory and when he gets on a plane and goes home to the USA (and the plane passengers get to their homes all over the world) - all hell breaks loose.

The end of the movie brings back the children theme but with a twist. One set of parents are pregnant and one set lose a child. It also shows children and parents dead in Angola of a 2nd mutated more lethal wave that will kills millions more.



Bird Flu was also unrealistic in a Peter Pan way. Thee first woman survivor starts out a broken woman and becomes a hero. She has 2 children and is the wife of the dead American man who visited the Chinese factory. She falls apart at first but then pulls herself together and marshals her neighborhood into helping each other. Sharing food, water or whatever supplies available. It was not realistic because none of them had weapons. She and her helpers would have been killed outright within the first month of the outbreak. There was NO food in the grocery stores and people were desperate. The movie showed gangs and desperate starving people attacking trained military personnel in convoys for their supplies. Why tangle with armed military soldiers when they can loot/rob/pillage from all the unarmed civilians in all the neighborhoods throughout the city? If this woman survived the first flu wave with no weapons, she won't when that Angola strains wipes whats left of civilization out of her city. But, the woman had guts. She had two children to protect from the disease and who would be alone in the world without her if she caught it and she could have just holed up somewhere with a few people but she didn't. She started out helping the starving old woman next door and then branched out. Amazing really. I hope she gets weapons and her neighbors and her survive the next wave. She was a hero.

The second woman survivor starts out a saint and become a total loser. Alma is a nurse who hypocritically condemned the other nurses who over time deserted the hospital to stay home taking care of their own sick families and/or to keep from catching the flu once it got out of control or passing it on to their families. Alma had no children just a husband. Alma really gets ticked off about one nurse in particular who leaves permanently with a few hospital supplies. Yet, Alma later deserts the hospital, the other staff members and her patients also when she gets pregnant. Alma's husband, Curtis, who was called into the Army National Guard to keep order in the city constantly tells his wife to desert the hospital and her patients which would create even more chaos and she finally took his advice. He already had the flu and survived. In his mind, he survived, she hadn't caught it yet so get her out before she did and to hell with everyone else. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that once she deserted the hospital, he would desert the National Guard and both would take off to be with her relatives. Alma is a loser. Curtis's immunity won't protect him in the second wave and I hope if there has to be more victims of the flu that these two be next to get it.

One last unrealistic part of the film was Alma was definitely on the chunky side (as in fat) at the beginning of the film and was still fat at the end of the film months despite months of working on her feet and a severe shortage of food so bad it cost $19 for a small bag of coffee. Sarcasm here - maybe the flu bug had a hard time penetrating all that lard.

I felt this was very well done, It did not pull any punches. It show what could very well happen if, not if but when a flu like this happens. A lot can be learned from this film. I wonder how many people got the message about not having some extra food and water stored. How soon there was very little food to be had. No medicine like aspirin and other med. Under these condition you would need cash to buy what Little would be av-able. I would recommend watching this film at lest once more and see how much you can learn from this film. Keeping in mind what would you do and how well are you prepared to serve in your home with what you have right now!

Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America: 3 out of 10: This movie is both funny and sad. The funny part is fairly obvious as this certainly isn't a sober look at a possible impending crisis. This is a modern version of The Swarm. And much like those killer bees (and the so called killer bee crisis that prompted them) Bird Flu has joined a pantheon of media inspired end of the world scenarios (SARS, Y2K, Global Warming) that simply refuse to actually come about.

The sad part is the blatant attempt of the filmmakers to inspire panic. Disease pandemics historically were fairly common after all people didn't all die in their forties from heart disease. Even recent pandemics such as AIDS mirrors the old fashioned VD crisis (Think syphilis) that used to kill more soldiers than bullets.

The flu pandemic of the early twenties was a nasty business killing millions but honestly life went on. I wonder if our over dramatic media and their power hungry government allies would allow life as normal today.

The movie itself swerves wildly from fairly competent scenes (Triage in Grand Central Station) to the ridiculous (Rednecks try to ambush national guardsman in Manhattan).

The scenarios themselves are fairly useless as the filmmakers can't seem to decide exactly how contagious the bird flu is or for that matter whether the symptoms are an Ebola style crash or simply a long illness. Indeed one scene will show everyone in bio-hazard suits and the next will have nobody even wearing a mask.

The film also patently refuses to actually give any practical advice regarding what to do in a Bird Flu crisis. (Outside of wash your hands, what no duct tape?) The acting and directing are competent for a TV movie but the script is all over the map. Last the movie has a strangely non-exponential death total running on the bottom of the screen. Just like the Swarm did.

This is an excellent, well acted well thought out film. The scenarios are very real. I cannot help but surmise that when a major flu pandemic hits, we will react much the way this film portrays. For disaster film fans this is a must.

A good movie that shows how pandemic diseases spread expotentially. As the movie progressed it became rather unrealistic and inconsistent in certain areas.

it wasn't much more than that. i saw this in my high school health class and liked it. it is a movie about what would happen if the bird flue disease spread to America. it is basically what you would think, mass histaria. it almost plays out like a vombie, but no running or chasing scenes. it's okay, it has a lot of subplots, but by far the best one is the one with the nurse working at the hospital. it cuts off at 90 minets though, i felt it could have been a lot longer. it ends basically ends at the first night of a two part mini-series. it could go into a lot more detail and got into the characters a bit more. it seems like they were tring to fit it into a 2 hour time slot and cut a lot out at the last minute. but ll in all it's pretty good. the dvd dosen't seem to have any extras or deleated senes which have been nice. but you take what you get, i'll ask for it for my birthday. can't wait to see it again.