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in
Andromeda strain
After a satellite crash lands in a remote New Mexico village, the whole village and the 2 government officials tasked with retrieving it die in a mysterious manner. Its up-to scientists to find the root cause of this strange occurence.
The movie belongs to this very niche genre called a mission film. Most movies try to cover lot of things during the course of its runtime. But there are few movies which focus extensively on one thing. No matter the time and events in the movie all of them relate to one common thing. Every character's motivation is the same. This approach gave the movie a very pointed focus. Audience are treated to very unique scenes of a village where everyone is dead and scientists are going through the village among all these dead bodies. The concept of quarantine and isolation are key plot points in the movie.Even though antagonist of the movie is virus, the way it creates this sense of dread among all the people in this facility and all people involved in this first line of defense for humanity has a very visceral feeling. Its a whole new play ground for the director.The movie is very matter of fact about the biological procedures to isolate and neutralize this virus. Our protagonists are all normal looking everyday heroes. Most of the actors are unknowns or little known actors. Thats a very big deal. I mean the director must have had to fight studios to let them put an all unknown cast. Here the virus is the lead character. Its driving the plot and presence of a movie star could have spoilt its thrill. The three parts of this puzzle include the virus itself, the survivors immune to the virus and the test subjects killed by virus. Its interesting how all three play a part in their mission.
The main problem with the movie is that it slightly falls apart in the third act. Until this point the whole procedure has a very realistic feel to it. Its an incredible achievement by director to create this visceral feel among audience by making the whole movie move at a natural pace and not succumb to cinematic techniques. However in the end the director wanted that cinematic ending and so he decided to ramp up the narrative momentum. Even though he did that cleverly and staying true to realistic tone, the movie did feel abrupt in the end. I mean just a few minutes ago we were lost and in the matter of minutes we found everything and they dropped the ball on full impact of the antagonist a little bit in the end. Only the pace felt unnatural and jarring to the rest of the movie.It not a masterpiece by any means but it makes for a very good double feature with another space based movie called Capricorn one. Both have this semi conspiracy theory based narrative feel to them.
After a satellite crash lands in a remote New Mexico village, the whole village and the 2 government officials tasked with retrieving it die in a mysterious manner. Its up-to scientists to find the root cause of this strange occurence.
The movie belongs to this very niche genre called a mission film. Most movies try to cover lot of things during the course of its runtime. But there are few movies which focus extensively on one thing. No matter the time and events in the movie all of them relate to one common thing. Every character's motivation is the same. This approach gave the movie a very pointed focus. Audience are treated to very unique scenes of a village where everyone is dead and scientists are going through the village among all these dead bodies. The concept of quarantine and isolation are key plot points in the movie.Even though antagonist of the movie is virus, the way it creates this sense of dread among all the people in this facility and all people involved in this first line of defense for humanity has a very visceral feeling. Its a whole new play ground for the director.The movie is very matter of fact about the biological procedures to isolate and neutralize this virus. Our protagonists are all normal looking everyday heroes. Most of the actors are unknowns or little known actors. Thats a very big deal. I mean the director must have had to fight studios to let them put an all unknown cast. Here the virus is the lead character. Its driving the plot and presence of a movie star could have spoilt its thrill. The three parts of this puzzle include the virus itself, the survivors immune to the virus and the test subjects killed by virus. Its interesting how all three play a part in their mission.
The main problem with the movie is that it slightly falls apart in the third act. Until this point the whole procedure has a very realistic feel to it. Its an incredible achievement by director to create this visceral feel among audience by making the whole movie move at a natural pace and not succumb to cinematic techniques. However in the end the director wanted that cinematic ending and so he decided to ramp up the narrative momentum. Even though he did that cleverly and staying true to realistic tone, the movie did feel abrupt in the end. I mean just a few minutes ago we were lost and in the matter of minutes we found everything and they dropped the ball on full impact of the antagonist a little bit in the end. Only the pace felt unnatural and jarring to the rest of the movie.It not a masterpiece by any means but it makes for a very good double feature with another space based movie called Capricorn one. Both have this semi conspiracy theory based narrative feel to them.