dougdoepke Too bad that a white-knuckle premise is undercut by laborious execution. Seems an experimental space scoop has brought back an alien life form from outside Earth's orbit that has killed a small New Mexico town. The exceptions are an old man and a baby who somehow survived. Now a high-security laboratory set up for investigating such possibilities must determine the nature of the life form before it spreads. A small specialized group of scientists are assigned the earth-shaking task.The first 10-minutes or so are excitingly compelling. However the movie's remainder turns relentlessly inward into a self-enclosed laboratory space that soon stifles the promising beginning. Now I have nothing against technical argot, but 90-minutes or so of mainly analytic biology soon had me looking around my room. Compounding that esoteric dialog is the self-enclosed space of the multi-level lab itself. In short, the dialog seldom strays from scientific jargon while the camera seldom strays from small spaces. Too bad, because the dimension of an outside world is soon lost. And, after all, it's an outside world in all its diversity that is presumably in peril. Had the screenplay given the researchers more personal context, then the visuals could have relieved some of the monotony by cutting away to family or community. Some such would have humanized the race against time. At the same time, the cast conveys little of the crisis's intensity, and that includes the wise-cracking Reid who I guess is supposed to be comedy relief.That's not to say that the movie fails altogether in suspense or involvement. As indicated, the premise itself is loaded with potential and some manages to surface even amid an over-extended run-time and a stifling context. However, the general treatment appears to get carried away in the process.

rkRusty I first heard of and read the work of Michael Crichton by chance in my early teens, and found him to be one of the most engaging writers I'd come across. That position still holds; his novels are beautifully paced and expertly crafted, with character driven narratives and well constructed dialogue. As a result, I was sceptical as to how well this would come across in film. I'd seen Jurassic Park before I'd read it and found it very entertaining, though reading the novel highlighted how much of the original story had been 're-made for Hollywood'. Thankfully, The Andromeda Strain does not suffer from the obligatory 'magic touch' of Hollywood.It is paced excellently, steadily building tension whilst thoroughly and accurately exploring how science might discover and potentially exploit extraterrestrial life. The characters are realistic, both in appearance and behaviour, each with their own unavoidable faults that add significantly to the story. As a result, there is an unnerving undertone of man's authority, the right of humanity to conquer the unknown, best described by Dr. Stone - "we will understand it and destroy it". By the end, you will not root for mankind.Suffice to say, this is one of the best films I've ever seen, easily the best science fiction film. Thoroughly recommended.

Cheese Hoven This dull and dated sci-fi thriller, heavy on ponderous detail but light on action, is certainly not recommendable to those with short attention spans. What little special effects there are are limited to computer models on screens, and, even if they were cutting edge at the time, seem unbelievably primitive now.The basic premise, a space virus that wipes out and US town and the attempts by the country's best scientists to identify and quarantine the virus, is intriguing. But the script over-explains every painstaking scientific investigation to a point where it becomes like watching a boring lecture.Spoiler Alert.And after all this, the scientists are completely irrelevant to the solution! The virus itself mutates to a harmless form without any action from the scientists. An amazingly Un-Hollywood anticlimax.Worth watching if you are interested in 70s sci-fi.

p-stepien Within the logic confines of the Cold War and the eternal quest for the upper hand in annihilation, space becomes a frontier for seeking the next new biological weapon. When a US satellite crash-lands in a remote town of Piedmont in New Mexico a sudden outbreak of a cosmic threat causes almost the entire town to die in mid-step. The terrifying reality of an uncontrollable epidemic initiates a clandestine Wildfire project, where the finest scientific minds are whisked away to a secure underground facility with state of the art technology and a self-detonating nuclear device set to explode to prevent any potential outbreak. The project itself was formed by a group of prominent scientists led by Dr. Jeremy Stone (Arthur Hill) specifically for this eventuality: to counterattack any extraterrestial form of life, that could cause a deadly epidemic. Together with fellow scientists Charles Dutton (David Wayne), Ruth Leavitt (Kate Reid) and Mark Hall (James Olson) they descend into the facility, where they attempt to isolate the new life form and diagnose the two survivors of Piedmont: an crackpot drunkard and a helpless infant.Transcending into Robert Wise's feature is a prolonged pay-off, mostly focused on the procedural side of such a scenario, slowly building the story and only about midway do we finally get down to actually finding out what the titular Andromeda strain is, which in turn leads to an intense and riveting finale. Meanwhile however we snail downward the facility with five separate levels - each with scenes of progressive sterilisation. The journey to the heart of the facility, where the nitty gritty essence of the research starts, is essentially tedious, albeit serving its purpose of setting up the final act and acknowledging the relapsed tension that such an occurrence would create. Although the fate of the world being at hand, the road to salvation is slow, meticulous and affords no space for a misstep. Despite the slow unwinding there is also little in the way of character development, possibly only Kate Reid's cantankerous Ruth offering a stronger imprint on proceedings, which are otherwise dominated by the science and the crawling Armageddon.Midway the lethargic pacing stalled my interest, but once the story unfolds all the pieces fall into place delivering a high-tempo ending within this otherwise sedentary movie. Coupled with arguably the most exact scientific jargon in sci-fi features history and a overall believable background (despite some ridiculous mumbo-jumbo by one of the scientists about the possibility of microorganisms being sentient) delivers a sombre piece that can bore most, but will engage those who offer the movie their mind and body.