Pandemic |
  • USA • 2009 • 91m •    • Directed by: Jason Connery. • Starring: Ray Wise, Graham McTavish, Peter Holden, Alesha Rucci, Kristi Culbert, Aaron Favor, Tom Proctor, Trevor Richardson, Chris Harper, Dashiell Connery, Mark Alan Anderson, John Milton Branton, Bobby Burkey. • Music by: Christian Henson.    A virus strikes a New Mexico county and the local veterinarian gets caught in the middle. With a very quick response time, the presence of the U.S. military has the locals thinking conspiracy theory. The vet must pair up with an eccentric rancher who has ideas of his own of what the government is up to, so they can expose the threat and save humanity.
|
Trailers:
| Length: | Languages: | Subtitles: |
Review:
Location. I liked the location although it was supposed to be in New Mexico and the first scenes looked more like Arizona but the rest could have been New Mexico. The final scene with the dog definitely wasn't in New Mexico as there were saguaros but maybe that's a dog that travels far. (Actual shooting location was Arizona and not New Mexico.)
Also this is supposed to be a small rural area. But clearly when the vet is driving through town, the town is quite large. The main street has at least two street lights and looks like it goes on. She goes into a poorer part of town. This is not a small backwater of a few hundred people.
Plot. The plot was all over the place initially and when we finally figure it out, we're left with the understanding that America tested a biological weapon on its own people and were purposely killing some of them.
Acting. The acting was poor - more like local theatre actors than professional. Some scenes did not play out well like the first scene where the guy was going to shot his horse. The long night desert chase scene.
Pacing. In the first 5 minutes I was impressed at how fast the movie was moving along. Then odd things happened like the Doctor dying but we only see that with the body bag tag. I thought it was moving the plot along fast but then that was followed by an excessively long period of the vet driving through town and waving to everyone. Instead of playing a snippet of the boring song, they play the whole thing. Finally I fast forwarded as I was getting irked by the slow song, the repetitive images and the whole filler of the segment.
Music. Speaking of which most of the music and songs were OK at best. Some wasn't very good but other not too bad but the mixing was all over the place. You would not buy the soundtrack.
Missing Element. The movie showed us several times that people were not liking the lock down around them. A few overt scenes and a few inferred scenes. Except for a verbal confrontation at one point, there would have been physical confrontation with the army. If this really is the backwater they want it to be then you'd have guys hiding from the law; armed ranchers etc. who are not going to be quietly pushed around my the military without explanation. Also, anyone who has been in rural New Mexico knows that there are dozens of back roads, ranch roads, old cart trails that could lead you cross country by truck let alone ease of movement by foot. Lots of people would have been escaping and that would have been better filler than some of the slow pieces that were inserted such as the aforementioned drive around town or the long chase scene at night in the desert.
Review by moorek from the Internet Movie Database.
Movie Database