"The Andromeda Strain" Concludes. Eh.

(Part 1 of my review is here)

The blessing and curse of mini-series is that you've got plenty of time to explore little side-plots. It's great if you've got enough interesting things to explore, but when you're going for a tight scifi thriller, all that extra time can end up wasted. The tension that builds in the conclusion of  A&E's"The Andromeda Strain" remake is hampered by the thoroughly unnecessary amount of time spent on the side plot with the reporter who is chasing the story, and a thin, uninteresting romance.

It's a shame, because otherwise the second half is better than the first. As the drama reaches its climax, it's easy to get swept up in the action. Thank god for that, because this is not a film which stands on its other merits. Daniel Dae Kim is still wasted in his small, flat role, and the chemistry between Benjamin Bratt and Christa Miller is so non-existent it's actually a vacuum. But there's nothing like a big countdown clock and heroic deaths to get the blood pumping. It worked for Star Trek - again and again and again - there's just something irresistible about a self-destruct sequence.

Other than that self-destructing climax, there's not a whole lot going on. There's a lot more time spent reminding us how evil the government is, we get a sort of random drop-in about Rick Schroeder's character being gay (which seems weirdly irrelevant) and an eco-message is jammed compassionately down our throats. Of course, there's also plenty of techno-babble about figuring out what Andromeda is, and how to stop it - the undersea bacteria from hell, of course - and some bland treachery from the non-romantic lady doctor, but mostly we're just waiting for the big finale.

Was this a mediocre adaptation of "The Andromeda Strain" or is the story just not that good to begin with? The 1971 version is widely regarded as a classic, but so are "Soylent Green" and "Planet of the Apes," two scifi movies from the same era which are also pretty terrible if examined carefully. It's been a long time since I've seen the original "Andromeda," and I honestly can't remember if it was good or not. The politics of this version seem a little forced, which wasn't a problem with the original, but the basic plot didn't get less interesting. Maybe it was never that interesting to begin with.

So, "The Andromeda Strain" is a by-the-numbers scifi thriller which won't make your imagination work too hard. Not exactly impressive, but there's plenty more classic scifi out there to be remade, maybe we'll stumble across brilliance eventually.

Comments

[Jack Richards]

I thought the new film was fun and entertaining. I saw the old 1971 version when it came out. This version was more entertaining and effective at creating a true sense of dred of the virus.

[Kilroy]

Too heavy-handed in the political "message", I thought. In that vein, so were the 80's "Red Dawn" and "The Day After". In their favor, those two were original movies, so there was nothing to compare them to. And they were actually entertaining in thier take on a reality run amok.

The original "Andromeda Strain" may have been a classic, but it wasn't as entertaining as "Soylent Green" or "Planet of the Apes"...which WERE terrible, by the way. Thought provoking, maybe, but the book wasn't that riveting to me, either.

Too much misdirection and idle, nonproductive speculation about time travel and the idea that a state-of-the-art facility would allow someone to use a "dead" thumb to over-ride a fail-safe autodestruct system was insultingly inplausible. Even current, warehouse-level thumb-print technology is starting to use heart-beat or temperature correlation to make sure someone cannot do just that...cut off someone's thumb for identification.

The reporter's story-arc was superfluous while Kim was wasted as a character, serving only to provide continuity between the book's (and original movie's) "character with epilepsy". The ending soliloquy was so ham-handed, it diluted the message, relying on the slinging of sheer verbage to fill out the time.

The first half, I thought, was less "intrusive" and message-heavy, and though it veered considerably from the original, it was just cosmetic rather than any real deviation from the core plot. Second half...well, I no longer recognized this film as the Andromeda Strain.

Not exactly awful, but something that had so much more potential beofre the shills got ahold of it.