Quarantine

My review was written in August 1990 after watching the film on Republic Pictures video cassette.

This Canadian sci-fier starts swiftly and promisingly in the genre of "1984" but soon sputters into boredom. Direct-to-video release is a tough slog.

Filmmaker Charles Wilkinson's half-baked storyline doesn't mention AIDS but has relevance in its more universal theme of a future police state in which the methods used to combat a plague have become gimmicks to control the populace.

It's been five years since suspected carriers were rounded up and quarantined, but Senator Ford (evil Jerry Wasserman) insists on keeping folks under lock and key. In fact, he's expanding the roundups and quashing any opposition, starting by arresting doctor Lee Taylor and putting him on trial.

After some good commando action scenes in which heroine Beatrice Boepple penetrates the headquarters, film settles into completely unconvincing cat and mouse action Script deficiencies rise to the surface: Boepple is Taylor's daughter, she kidnaps computer expert Garwin Sanford who's Wassermans' chief assistant, Sanford is two-timing Wasserman by bedding down his wife Michele Goodger, etc. The convoluted relationships among all the principals makes for zero credibility.

The germ of an idea here on how repressive tactics, called for in the name of some national security emergency, can become standard operating procedure gets lost. Sharper scripting could have driven this theme home as well as bringing out the AIDS metaphor more concretely.

Acting is okay: Boepple handles fighting and loving scenes well. Tech credits don't do justice to the sci-fi premise.