There’s a good smattering of extras, there is a solid commentary that covers both discs (it’s jammed packed, but a tad dry) as well as a very informative, if brief (26 min) making of documentary that covers the project’s origins and development through the years.
Maybe he now knows that he has nothing to prove, relaxing into television, safe in the hands of the brothers Scott.Įven Eric Mc McCormack is able to overcome his sitcom typecasting as the Gay Lawyer, Will and deliver a charismatic performance, that, like Bratt’s is assured and better than quite a few A-list movie stars. In fact, I think that now that Mr Bratt has matured, he has lost some of the cocky, young guy image that hampered many of his earlier, cinematic efforts. Composed of roughly two solid hours of uninterrupted technical exposition, the suspenseful doomsday film nevertheless provides an entertaining ride. From the opening I was gripped, and even the presence of Benjamin Bratt wasn’t enough to hinder my enjoyment. The only really big tech-oriented Sci-fi movie to succeed in the immediate wake of Kubricks 2001, Robert Wises The Andromeda Strain thrilled audiences by flattering their intelligence. There had to be some quality in this three hour miniseries (spread across two discs) considering that the Scott brothers were behind it, however I wasn’t too sure that it would be worth three hours of my short life.
The Andromeda Strain is one such example. There was a time when television was seen as the poor cousin to the cinema, there was a stigma attached to appearing on the box, however in the last ten years or so television has really come into its own delivering thrills and spills that match or even exceed those of feature films. After a spendidly traditional opening sequence, the message about the dangers of scientific research begins to loom ponderously large, with banks of super. The audio is in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, and there are English and Spanish subtitles. The transfer is sharp and brilliant, greatly enhancing the enjoyment of this movie's aluminum rooms and shiny white lab instruments. With Ernest Lehman, Robert Mitchum, and Julie. It is slow paced, faithful to the book and a lot more interesting. Robert Wise talks about Orson Welles and working on Citizen Kane and his films in this 45 minute documentary. However, when an investigative journalist (McCormack) gets wind of the story things begin to take a turn for the worse. Universal's deluxe disc of The Andromeda Strain belies its low price. If you are familiar to The Andromeda Strain book or 1971 movie, you might find it interesting to see how it can go horribly wrong.
When a satellite falls from the sky a small US town is hit by an unknown plague, the army call in a crack team of scientists and doctors – lead by Bratt to try and discover what has gone wrong.
The series has a pretty decent cast including Benjamin Bratt, Ricky Schroder, Andre Braugher and Eric McCormack (of Will and Grace fame). This television mini-series is produced by directing brothers Tony and Ridley Scott and based on the novel by Michael Crichton, you know – that guy behind Jurassic Park and E.R.