Let's do the Hollywood Pandemic: "Outbreak" (1995) versus "Contagion" (2011)

In the spirit of a prior Public Health class offered at UC Berkeley taught by former Director of Student Services Vincent Atchity, “Public Health in Cinema,” I offer a review comparing two films on viral pandemics, “Contagion” (2011) and “Outbreak” (1995).  Although the movies were released 16 years apart, I had the opportunity to watch both this year, and I compare and contrast them. 

Numbers: 

	Contagion	Outbreak
Total gross	$75 million	$187 Million
Budget	$60 million	$50 million
Imdb review	7/10	9/10
Rottentomatoes review	84/63	60/55

Let’s first talk about similarities.  Both are large budget Hollywood films featuring large ensemble casts with many familiar celebrities, many of whom in “Outbreak” have won Oscars (for other films).  As it turns out, neither film won any Oscars, and they do cover pandemics, but that's where the similarity ends.

While the films do not have any actors in common (there is a 16 year gap between them, after all), an interesting coincidence is that Donald Sutherland stars in ”Outbreak” while Elliot Gould is in “Contagion”; both played the rebellious medical duo Hawkeye and Trapper John from the original “M*A*S*H” film from 1970 (the inspiration for the long-running TV series with different actors).  Not to be too much of a plot spoiler, but both also have relatively happy endings, or at least achieve some sort of resolution (although the death toll in one is substantially larger than the other).   Both feature in-depth depictions of the response functions of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), including the variety of biosafety labs and analysis of the microbes in question.   

Okay, cut to the chase, literally:  in my opinion, "Contagion" is by far the superior film, even as it ups the ante on global catastrophe relative to "Outbreak".  The acting in "Contagion" is crisper and more believable, and I actually learned some things with this movie; with Outbreak, this was not the case.  What really got me scratching my head with "Outbreak" was all the helicopter chases.  It seemed to me that some studio exec, confused and/or bored by the technical aspects of a global pandemic, simply started barking out orders, "Needs more action!  Let's throw in helicopter chases!"

Futhermore, I don't care how good of an actor Dustin Hoffman is, he simply can't do the action hero. 

 http://www.rottentomatoes.com/

http://www.imdb.com/