Early Review: A&E's THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN
On May 26 and 27th, get ready for an amazing event on A&E, as they premiere their original 4-hour movie, THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN over two-nights.
I have seen the movie and it is a MUST-WATCH. Based on the book by Michael Crichton (and if you are a fan you are going to love it), The Andromeda Strain follows a group of scientists, the "Wildfire" team, as they try to find a cure for a disease they code-name Andromeda. The Andromeda originated from a U.S. military satellite that crashes in the small town of Piedmont, where it kills everyone in town, but two people. And so as they race against the clock, the "Wildfire" team will have to figure out what Andromeda is and how to kill it, before it spreads and kills everyone.
The story: It's never easy to translate a book into the screen, but The Andromeda Strain does a great job. It was able to include the details from the book, as well as keep the excitement you get when you read it. In the movie, the story unfolds at a great pace and it is able to really expand as much as needed on every character's story. Even though it is a 4-hour movie, it didn't feel like that at all. Plus they will only show 2-hours each night, so that might help if the thought of watching four-hours in a row doesn't appeal to you.
The Cast: The Andromeda Strain has a very strong cast, who have great chemistry with each other.
Benjamin Bratt plays Dr. Jeremy Stone, who creates the "Wildfire" lab project and leads the team of scientists working on Andromeda.
Eric McCormack plays Jack Nash, a journalist trying to uncover the truth about Andromeda, while dealing with his addiction. By the way, this is a great performance from him, he was my favorite character of the movie.
Rick Schroder plays Major Bill Keene, who is a virologist from the Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease, and part of the "Wildfire" team.
Andre Braugher plays General George Mancheck, a U.S. Army Biochemical Research officer who assembles the "Wildfire" team.
Christa Miller plays Dr. Angela Noyce, a surgeon, exobiologist and specialist in tropical and exotic diseases, and another person on the "Wildfire" team.
Daniel Dae Kim plays Dr. Tsi Chou, a microbiologist who once served as the premiere biological weapons designer for the Chinese government and now is a U.S.-based bio-terrorism consultant. He is also part of the "Wildfire" team.
Viola Davis plays Dr. Charlene Barton, a pathologist formerly of the Centers for Disease Control now at the San Francisco health department. She is the fifth and final member of the "Wildfire" team.
Overall: After I finished watching The Andromeda Strain, my first thought was, why wasn't this released at the theater? The quality is so high that I forgot it was a TV movie. I actually saw Eric McCormack on Conan O'Brian last night and he was saying that The Andromeda Strain was the blockbuster of the summer (for TV I am assuming), and I have to agree with him.
And for the final bonus, The Andromeda Strain is brought to you by Ridley and Tony Scott. Now that's a great team.
Don't forget to watch The Andromeda Strain on A&E on May 26 at 9pm for Part 1 and on May 27 at 9pm for Part 2.
May 22, 2008 by Sandie · Print This Article
Category: A&E, Reviews
If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to our RSS feed or by email
Related Posts
was this not a movie years ago?
I'm SO excited for this!!! Looks fantastic.
Jack: yes, a movie was made in 1971, but this will be an updated remake w/ a stellar cast.
I was excited. I loved the book and the movie when I got around to watching it. Then I saw this. A&E failed with this remake. It made me cry to see such a perfect sci-fi book about a virus that didn't make everyone a zombie, massacred so terribly. The cast was great and make up for some of the atrocities that I felt were filler and terrible lines forced upon the actors/actresses. If this had seen theaters it would have been taken out after the opening weekend after it failed to deliver like the original film.
This was terrible - so cliche and the ultimate 'TV' movie
WARNING: You will want those 4 hours of your life back.
Save the time and go grab the book, for a real SCIENCE thriller, instead of this mishmash of political cartoons and TV movie cliches.
What a waste of opportunity, wasting the cast, sets and effects on such a poorly done rewrite script.
There is the addition fo a smarmy alcoholic investigative reporter seeking redemtion, an evil businessman politician, a military conspiracy thats assasainating people, and all kinds of other CRAP that is not there in the book. And the lame attempts at being politically correct in language, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation that crept into the script was a considerable distraction, further destroying this movie.
ALL of that crap was simply NOT NEEDED!
This was an utter disaster, and a complete let down compared to the book, and even the dated 1971 movie. I guess the script writer was such a talentless hackc that he could not build drama from the elements in the book , and had to at an unbelievable military conspiracy and assasains, pulling them unimaginatively straight out of the "evil military conspiracy", "evil capitalists" cliches of the far left in the 1960's.
This was absolute GARBAGE.
Andromeda deserved far better.
Yoo, i am doing a book report on this tell me if u have any usefull information for me