Outbreak focuses on a deadly virus which is transported to the United States by a monkey from the jungles of Zaire, Africa. Through a curious chain of events, we see how this disease is passed along until it contaminates an entire northern California town.
Dustin Hoffman plays a virologist from the army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and Rene Russo is featured as his ex-wife, a specialist from the Centers for Disease Control. Their heroic efforts to isolate the victims of the lethal virus and to find an antidote for it are pitched against the machinations of an army general (Donald Sutherland) who is trying to protect the government's amoral involvement in biological weapons research.
Outbreak, directed by William Petersen, is an intensely gripping film which feeds our fears about contamination and the threat of a runaway lethal virus. The best part of the film deals with the ethical conundrums surrounding the idea of sacrificial violence.