Customer Reviews

Virus (Widescreen)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

in my opinion,this movie was horrible.wow,what a mess.bad acting,bad
special effects,dumb plot.this one has it all.none of the actors seemed
to want to be there.i can't believe i sat through this thing.i guess i
was hoping it would improve.but it didn't.it'.definitely one of the
worst movies i have seen in in a long time.if you like a movie with
good acting,good special effects and a good plot-look elsewhere.i give
Virus 1/5 though it deserves much less.

In an interview with one of the celebrity magazines, Jamie Lee Curtis listed two films she wished she had never made: "Grandview, USA," and 1999's "Virus." The two movies couldn't stand further apart in subject matter-"Grandview, USA" is one of those treacly coming of age films that appear on the scene every year or so. "Virus," on the other hand, is a huge budget science fiction film designed to bring in millions from audiences who favor bombastic effects over character development, logical continuity, and an intelligent script. While I think Curtis's statements about "Virus" a tad extreme, the movie surprisingly tanked at the box office despite its heavy reliance on shock and awe production values. When I recently viewed the movie on DVD, I more or less enjoyed the film. I did, however, come to understand why it ultimately failed at the box office. Curtis shouldn't fear any lasting damage to her career from "Virus," however. With her cult status from the "Halloween" franchise and her increasing forays into family comedy ("House Arrest," "Freaky Friday"), she should continue to rake in the bucks well into the future.

"Virus" begins with an eerie disaster. An amorphous, glowing cloud-like object from outer space invades the Mir space station just as the satellite's crew is about to transmit important information to a Russian ship on the ocean. The object, whatever it is, manages to send itself down to earth and directly into the boat's computer system through this transmission link. The ship's electronics go instantly haywire, with people screaming and running all over the place. Fast forward a few days to another boat on the high seas, this one a barge transporting merchandise through a storm. Helmed by a grizzly old tar named Captain Robert Everton (Donald Sutherland) and manned by a crew including Kit Foster (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Steve Baker (William Baldwin), the boat flounders in the rough waters and loses its cargo. Everton isn't popular with his crew; his steadfast refusal to cut the barges loose almost caused the entire boat to sink. It turns out Everton's entire life savings was bound up in that cargo, a fact that causes him immense distress until someone spots an abandoned boat a few miles ahead. Filled with sudden optimism over a lucrative recovery fee, Everton and his crew board the vessel. And wouldn't you know it? It's the Russian research craft we saw at the beginning of the movie.

The ship is in sorry shape, drifting in the ocean with no crewmembers and no power. Still, Everton recognizes the value of his find and figures the finder's fee should be worth millions. As long as no one on the boat is alive, the captain and his crew should collect the money. In the meantime, they have to turn the power back on and sail the ship into harbor. The trouble begins at this point. An unfortunate "accident" sends the research vessel's anchor plunging through Everton's boat. Now trapped on the Russian ship, the crew of the cargo boat discovers troubling evidence of a decidedly sinister series of events. The sole survivor of the disaster, a research scientist named Nadia (Joanna Pacula), tells Everton and company about an alien life form that took over the ship's power grid, a creature that used parts of the boat to build killer robots to wipe out the Russians. Since the first thing Everton did when he got on the boat is turn the power back on, the alien is once again on the loose. The organism tells the humans that it wants to wipe out all the people on earth because it considers them a virus. Neat. In the meantime, cloud creature consoles itself with turning Everton's crew into gruesome looking cyborgs. "Virus" turns into an extended chase scene through the bowels of the Russian ship as Curtis, Baldwin, and the dwindling others attempt to destroy the life form.

"Virus" is a predictable, by the numbers science fiction film. While the special effects work looks good (not great, unfortunately), and there is a bit of gore to liven things up, the character development falls flat. Sutherland slums his way through his role as the scheming Everton. Curtis tries hard but ultimately fails to muster much interest in her tough woman role. William Baldwin is, well, William Baldwin. If you went into this one looking forward to a great performance from him, you deserve the disappointment you will inevitably find. The rest of the cast serves as cannon fodder. This isn't to say I despised "Virus." There are a few things of interest if one looks hard enough. For example, I roared so hard with laughter over Sutherland's metamorphosis into a cyborg that I hurt myself. Everton tried to make a deal with the alien but quickly fell prey to its murderous designs. When we next see him, he's been turned into some hideous half machine, half human monstrosity, but he still has his captain's cap parked (and at a jaunty angle, too) on top of his head! Too funny! Why does he still have that hat on? Maybe the script thought the audience would fail to recognize him.

"Virus" tends more to the ridiculous than anything else, but it's not a lost cause. As long as you go into the film expecting to see a formulaic plot, you'll probably enjoy most of it. Supposedly, the DVD version has a ton of extras, but the disc I watched didn't have any on it except a trailer for the film. Would I watch "Virus" again? Probably, if it showed up on cable and I had two hours to kill. I wouldn't, however, buy it or rent it again. If you want great science fiction, rent "Aliens," "The Terminator," or a dozen other memorable movies. If you're just looking to slum for awhile, watch "Virus."

A team of Russian cosmonauts encounter a strange, malevolent electrical being in space just before transmitting data down to a research vessel, the Vladislav Volkov in the South Pacific, and inadvertently wind out transmitting the being.

In the meantime, the tugboat Sea Star is struggling with a large cargo in tow and gets caught in Typhoon Leiah, with some spectacular special effects on the storm in this scene. After loosing the cargo they must head for the eye of the storm in order to repair their boat, and meet up with the abandoned and derelict Russian research vessel. The captain claims the vessel as salvage and sets alight the crew's dreams of big money in the salvage fees.

When they power up the Russian ship in order to bring her in, they unwittingly release the electrical being, starting up all the monstrosities it had already managed to create before being shut down by the remaining survivor of the Russian crew.

The visuals are superb on the cybernetic creations, gory and disgusting; and the suspense as the survivors struggle to best the living, intelligent being is palatable and thick. Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, and William Baldwin give excellent performances, and the supporting cast as well. Derelict ship, creepy monster, lots of action, sexy heroine...and lots of blood and guts give this tasty morsel five stars on my list. Enjoy!

Virus didn't exactly light up the box office, during its original theatrical run, back in 1999. It was panned by most critics as nothing more than schlock. While it's not a great sci-fi film, it is better than I thought it would be, and deserves a spot on anyone's rental list.

When a sea going tug boat is crippled by a typhoon, the crew has little choice but to ride it out. They soon discover a high tech Russian ship with a lone surrvivor aboard. The crew tranfers to the Russian vessel, where Captian Robert Everton (Donald Sutherland), Navigator Kit Foster (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Steve Baker (Billy Baldwin), soon discover that something deadly has taken over the ship's systems. They must now fend off attacks from "water warriors" who have manifested, to stay alive.

At first glance, the story sounds positively absurd, and it is. But thanks to director John Bruno, who won an Oscar for his effects work on James Cameron's underwater(logged) adventure The Abyss, and Curtis, the film stays afloat. Based on an original Dark Horse Comics story, the film moves at lightning speed, which helps mitagate some of its problems. Sutherland is also fun to watch, as he chews enough scenery, for two films. And I was very delighted to find the effects were darn good (Bruno's expertise came in handy) too.

The DVD extras are pretty much standard fare, given the response, the film got from folks. There's a by the numbers Electronic Press Kit (EPK) style making of featurette. You also get to see a couple of nice deleted scenes to go through. Production notes, the theatrical trailer, weblinks to Dark Horse, and film highlights top off the bonus material.

As I say, Virus doesn't light up the world of cinema, but it does have just enough to make it a decent rental. *** and a half stars

I put off watching Virus for some time because of the general sense of mediocrity it seemed to generate in many viewers and, more importantly, the fact that it features not only Jamie Lee Curtis, who is not my favorite actress, but also a Baldwin brother (William). After watching it, though, I have to say that Virus is really not a bad movie at all. Certainly, there is a lot of Alien-type stuff going on, but there is plenty of action, a fair smidgeon of gore, and reason to hope that maybe, just this once, a Baldwin character might not survive to the end. Sherman "Is that Cuba Gooding, Jr.?" Augustus and Marshall Bell deserve a lot of credit for injecting some comedy and realism into this movie, but it is Joanna Pacula, in the role of Russian science officer Nadia Vinogradiya, who really steals the show, in my opinion. She certainly far outshines Jamie Lee Curtis, whose character has almost no depth whatsoever.

The trouble starts on Mir, as some sort of fast-moving cloud of energy takes over the space station and gets sent along for the ride down to a Russian scientific receiving vessel somewhere in the Pacific, where it puts on a light show to beat the band. Days later, a salvage boat led by the hopelessly annoying Captain Everton (Donald Sutherland in one of his lesser performances) tries to drag a barge through a hurricane; the boat makes it to the eye of the storm, where it discovers a large Russian ship dead in the water. The crews board the Russian vessel, finding no signs of the crew, and eyes start to widen at the thought of the money to be earned for salvaging this gigantic scientific ship. After they turn the power back on, they come to discover two life forms stowed away onboard, however. One of them is the ship's science officer Nadia Vinogradiya; the other is something not of this world. This alien life force needs electricity to function, and once the ship is powered back up it gets to work building all kinds of little robots who in turn build bigger robots, all of which work to destroy all humans on the vessel; in a nice little twist, man has become the virus to be eliminated. You can imagine what ensues. The humans fight to survive, giving the increasingly powerful alien life force a pretty good fight, even after their numbers start to dwindle and familiar faces in the form of Borg-like creatures turn their sights on the human intruders. I didn't care much for the ending, especially since all the wrong characters survived, but one British captain of another vessel delivers a classic six-line comment that did much to better my mood.

Virus is by no means a classic, but the film does deliver a suspenseful, pyrotechnic-laced good time. Jamie Lee Curtis in particular is put through the wringer, while Joanna Pacula is just terrific. I'm really not sure why many people hold this film in such low regard, as I found it both interesting and enjoyable. In my humble opinion, this is definitely an underrated motion picture.

The Dark Horse comic that Virus is based from wasn't that good to begin with; and this film adaptation plays out more like a rip off of an Aliens and Termiantor hybrid (then again, this was produced by Gale Anne Hurd; who produced both those films as well). Character development is thrown straight on out the window while the talents of Jamie Lee Curtis and William Baldwin are beyond wasted. However, Virus does have it's good points: Donald Sutherland hams it up so much you can't help but chuckle, plus the special effects are nicely put together and the gore effects are great as well. It seems ever since Aliens was such a hit way back when, a host of other very similar films have tried to copy that film's style and have fallen flat on their face. While Virus does have it's good qualities, for the most part the film is a waste of what might have been if it would have had actual thought put into the story and been handled by a more capable director. It is worth a viewing or two, but don't expect anything special out of it.

... Efficiently this splendid S.F. movie with the very good complicity of the other actor who's Donald SUTHERLAND and the accosted subject can do put across that an alien meeting can be stupendous, amazing because it's possible to foresse which we could be very in inferiority with an entity who his borned many time before the humanity, the mankind ! So, and howether without Jamie Lee Curtis this film could not be good, her feminity, his womanhood connected with many smartness and tempererament are solids advantages, the action is omnipresent in this story ! I've liked this pretty composition with many surprises sometimes horribles ! These are my typicals PREFERENTIALS ! THANKS JAMIE !

I enjoyed this movie very much! It's like "Aliens" vs "Terminator". Lots of action. A spaceship enters the earth's atmposphere and takes over the Mier space station which allows it to zoom down to a distroyer ship where it takes over all the electronic capabilities making half man/half machine robots that intend to take over the earth once they get rid of the "virus" known as man, eliminating all on board except one. Then, the Sea Star traveling out on the ocean, catch a glimpse of this vessel on radar and investigate hoping to salvage it for lots of $$$. Out of 7 crewmen (including Jamie Leigh Curtis) only 2 survive. Which ones? You'll have to watch it to find out!

*
I cannot really ''praise,'' per se, the originality or story of the film ''Virus,'' because, in all honesty, it's not what anyone can rightly call a great film. Sure, it's visually stunning and fun and enjoyable and all that... but it's certainly not ''Terminator'' or ''Aliens.''

Even so, I'm somewhat puzzled that so many reviewers are having a difficult time ''relating'' to this movie, based upon how it plays itself out. I think they are missing one key element in the whole thing, however:

Just as ADULT reviewers have to be reminded that ''Santa Claus Conquers the Martians'' was a movie made for the tiny tot audience, reviewers of the movie ''Virus'' need to keep in mind that this film was based on a ''comic book'' story (...or as ''fanboys''-- current and former --would call it, a ''graphic novel'')!

Anyone who pays any amount of attention would realize that there is NEVER (or rarely ever) going to be a ''totally straight'' presentation of a comic book story translated to the big screen -- even if the story itself is treated ''seriously'' within the pages of the comic. (''The Crow'' was one of those rarest of exceptions.)

Keeping that in mind may actually make viewing this movie about an alien energy lifeform that....??? uses human bodies for ''spare parts'' ???...., and tries to kill them off more effectively by constructing cybernetic monstrosities???.... okay, so it's a little ludicrous, but again, I don't think it was meant to be taken completely seriously -- it's mindless escapism that's both fun and scary. That's Entertainment!

* * *

Okay, so you have seen "The Abyss" about eight times, "Jaws" four times, "The Perfect Storm" once, and "The Terminator" a few times. Now, what do you watch? Yes, the theme that "humans are a virus to the planet earth and have to be eliminated" is not very original or surprising. Although, the irony that it is a virus that has made this observation is. "Virus" is an entertaining reprieve from your usuals. If you can put your "movie critic" nature aside, you will enjoy this movie.