Contaminated Man

It's 1986 in the U.S. Hurt wears a bad wig and forgets to wash his hands. Disaster strikes...

It's 'present day' in Eastern Europe. Robocop's grandpa causes a bio-hazard explosion. Hurt now just has bad hair, and after Ronin ("yull gart yuh monnar"), McElhone slaughters another accent, this time American, all the while simultaneously filming a commercial for Diet Coke.

No surprise that this didn't get a distribution deal in the U.K. and went straight to DVD/video. The kind of movie that killed Hurt's career. Absolute garbage!

Back away from the movie. Do not touch it with your bare hands. The director must have been away shooting another film. Edited by monkeys. Ug.

This story could have become a good movie, on paper it must have looked great. The story reminds me of " The Carrier(1988)" that was a fun movie, this one is not. The movie starts with William Hurt and his Wayne's World hair, dumbed look in his eyes and then you will know it already, this is another movie good old William slept all the way through... like in so many other movies he is acting like a zombie with his "I'am only here for the money" attitude. ofcourse there's more to make is a sinker, you have Peter Weller, quite a wooden actor but fun to watch in Robocop and screamers, gives the best performance of the entire cast but if you can believe the moves he make to see his son you are the type of person who still stays awake at night when it's christmas to see santa. The plot starts of rather good but becomes a tight budget chase movie combined with some MacGyver. I gave this one a chance for about an hour before searching for the remote controll and forward button.

Just watch "The Carrier" roughly the same plot, made with a shoestring budget but a hell of a lot more fun than this..

For God's sake people, let's try to get it right. The Weller character isn't carrying a virus or a pathogen or anything else biological and the Hurt character isn't a disease expert. Hurt plays a hazardous waste clean-up guy for the UN. Weller gets a dose of pesticide in the face that metabolizes into a chemical that causes instant fatal allergic reaction to anyone he touches.

This may seem like a trivial difference but at least it's a new idea, not just a recycling on any number of other movies, dating back at least to the Satan Bug in 1965 if not earlier. I'll pass up judging the rest of the film as everyone else has, but you've got to wonder about the validity of anyone's attention who apparently didn't pay any attention to the freakin' movie.

For a science scare movie to work well it has to be either truly original or a very good retelling. This movie is neither. Sure there is a pseudo-original twist in that the guy kills people because of a toxin and not because of a disease, but that is a very minor twist. There is the government conspiracy angle, the crusader protagonist who has personal experience...

And one real drawback of this movie is that the contaminated man has no pathos. Although the character is scripted to be someone who should be pitied, he is not. Without the pity the movie is pointless. The other characters are so cookie cutter they are ridiculous. The subplots are convoluted and annoying. And the saddest thing is the movie is too flat to even be enjoyed as mock material. Make the movie a 45 minute short and it might be worth watching.