History Film / Outbreak

-->'''Daniels:''' General, with all due respect, ''fuck you''. Sir.

* PrecisionFStrike: Twice:

-->'''[=McClintock=]:''' With all due respect, Colonel Daniels, if you do not follow us to Travis Air Force Base, I will blow you out of the sky.

-->'''Daniels:''' This is ''murder'', Billy, any way you fucking slice it.

-->'''Daniels:''' With all due respect, sir... ''fuck you.''

'''''Outbreak''''' (1995) is a suspense {{film}} starring Creator/DustinHoffman as Sam Daniels, Rene Russo as Robby Keough, and Creator/DonaldSutherland as Gen. [=McClintock=] (among many others-Creator/MorganFreeman, Creator/KevinSpacey, Cuba Gooding, Jr.) depicting a what-if scenario surrounding a deadly fictional African virus called Motaba, inspired by real-life Ebola outbreaks, and speculating on the measures taken by the military and the Center for Disease Control if such an outbreak occurred in the United States.

A deadly virus, Motaba, was killing a war-torn African village. Col. [=McClintock=], sent to see the status of the village, promises help. But what he really sends is a fuel-air-bomb to sterilize the town and everyone in it. Meanwhile, an infected monkey from this very area has been captured and smuggled to the United States, and into the hands of Jimbo, a young man who plans to sell it for the pet trade.

* [[PleaseWakeUp Please Don't Leave Me]]: Imploringly spoken by Sam Daniels as Robby looks like she might succumb to her Motaba infection. Followed by his calculated risk.

** [[DefiedTrope Defying this trope]] is the crux of the speech given by the White House Chief Of Staff, who asks everybody in the room to make ''damn sure'' that is necessary to wipe out Cedar Creek, ''damn sure'' that the American people understand there was no other choice, and [[TheReasonYouSuchSpeech damn sure that nobody gets the funny idea of lying about which decision they took after the fact]].

* TakingyouWithMe: [=McClintock=] threatens to sink Ford's career alongside his if he's arrested at the end. Ford, by that point in time, is beyond caring and orders the General's arrest.

** Donald [=McClintock=]]'s EstablishingCharacterMoment is his appearance in Africa in a faceless, black mask Hazmat suit, wherein he lies to a dying soldier before ordering the bombing of the village. Everything we see about him going forward tells the audience he is not a sympathetic character.

* NoOshaCompliance: We get a shot that shows the disease is airborne as it must have traveled from the isolation ward to the room of another patient who's had no contact. But a hospital would have heavy and redundant filtration for just that reason even if they were told the virus isn't airborne.

[=USAMRIID=] Doctor Sam Daniels, Dr. Casey Schuler and Major Salt once assigned to Cedar Creek, race against time with Robby's help, to find a way to cure the deadly virus. Worse, the Army, once seieng projections of the virus' progress across the North American continent, advises the president to take drastic measures...without sharing with him the information that they have a cure for the African strain and want to be able to use it as a biological weapon.

Imagine you are hunting a killer. The perpetrator is insidious, invisible, and deadly. It is smart and reactive. Its victims die in horrifying pain. There is no reasoning with it, no bargaining with it, and no way to stop it. The military wants to avoid a panic. The media questions the methods being used to stop it. [[TheReveal It is a billionth your size]].

A deadly virus, Motaba, that was killing an African village. Col. McClintock, sent to see the effects of the village, promises help. But what he really sends is a fuel-air-bomb to sterilize the town and everyone in it. Meanwhile, a monkey from this very area has been captured and smuggled to the United States, and into the hands of Jimbo, a young man who plans to sell it for the pet trade.

The smuggled monkey spits in Jimbo's face, on his way to sell it. When it turns out unsuitable (after having scratched the pet shop owner and having lost her banana to another monkey in the shop), Jimbo sets it free in California and hops a flight home to Boston -- during which he falls seriously ill. He greets his girlfriend with as passionate a kiss as he can muster, then passes out. But the cat is out of the bag. Cedar Creek, California becomes infected with a mutated and airborne strain of the virus.

[=usaarmid=] Doctor Sam Daniels, Dr. Robby Keough (his ex-wife), Dr. Casey Schuler and Major Salt once assigned to Cedar Creek, race against time to find a way to cure the deadly virus. Worse, the Army, once seieng projections of the virus' progress across the North American continent, advises the president...without sharing with him the information that they have a cure for the African strain and want to be able to use it as a biological weapon.

* HeroicSacrifice: Played with. Daniels pulls off his hazmat helmet in Robby's hospital room, knowing full well the virus is airborne, to give Robby the will to fight until the antiviral serum is completed.

* OneDoseFitsAll: The film shows everyone getting the cure to Motaba in IV bags. The specification Sam gives Robby is that every patient is getting 200 ml. This would probably need to vary by age and size of patient, and whether they could be brought back from the later stages of the virus.

* OneDoseFitsAll: The film shows everyone getting the cure to Motaba in IV bags, although it's never specified whether the cure was titrated individually for each patient or if every IV bag contained the same dosage.

* GameOfChicken: Salt does this with one of the helicopters chasing him and Daniels, to buy some time for them to get back to Cedar Creek.

* {{Fosreshadowing}}: As Casey and Sam are about to enter the secure environment, Casey catches a tear in Sam's suit and chides him playfully for being preoccupied over his divorce from Robby than with proper procedure. Later, Casey has worked himself so hard he begins to fall asleep at his post. Forgetting his oxygen line he walks away without unhooking it and tears his suit.

** Robby looks a little bit feverish, her eyes are a little fever-bright, and her hair is slightly disheveled. It's been perhaps a day between Casey becoming infected and Robby becoming infected. Even once she has entered the later stages, her makeup has been made to make her look pale and dried out, but she is not bleeding from her face like Casey was at the same stage.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: As Casey and Sam are about to enter the secure environment, Casey catches a tear in Sam's suit and chides him playfully for being preoccupied over his divorce from Robby than with proper procedure. Later, Casey has worked himself so hard he begins to fall asleep at his post. Forgetting his oxygen line he walks away without unhooking it and tears his suit.

* {{Irony}}: Sam and Casey get into an argument because Sam is being his usual obstinate self and insisting they've overlooked something. Casey tells Sam he should get some sleep, which only makes Sam angrier. Sam snaps that Casey should get some sleep. Casey as is his wont, jokes about having slept in july. The next shot is Sam having given in to sleep, and Casey still working, until he starts to fall asleep on his feet -- which is why he walks away without unhooking an tears his suit. If he'd listened to his own advice.

** There's a young mother in Cedar Creek who has come down sick and is obviously terrified. She bids goodbye to her children, who she can't even touch because she's contagious. She tries to speak reassuring words to her family that she visibly doesn't feel. She's sympathetic until the moment [[spoiler:we see her zipped into a body bag and carried off to be burned]].

** When he is in the early stages of the illness, and Daniels forces him awake, he says, "[[Film/TheWizardOfOz I had the strangest dream, Auntie Em. You were there, and you were there..."]]

* InfantImmortality: Played with. When Jimbo is on his flight home, already sick with Motaba (which by now the audience knows is seriously deadly), a little boy in a cowboy outfit asks for his cookie. Jimbo, despite being quite ill, playfully tells him he can have it. But his mother stops him before he can touch the infected cookie.

** There's a young mother in Cedar Creek who has come down sick and is obviously terrified. She bids goodbye to her children, who she can't even touch because she's contagious. She tries to speak reassuring words to her family that she visibly doesn't feel. She's sympathetic until the moment [[spoiler:we see her zipped into a body bag and carried off to be burned]].

* RefugeInAudacity: How Daniels gets onto the military flight to Cedar Creek.