Author: Jim McLennan

Dir: Chuck Bowman
Star:: Harry Hamlin, Nastassja Kinski, Joelle Carter, Susan Hogan

This was initially filed in the “Lost” category, though that is a bit of an exaggeration. Most of her films were available either from my own previous collection, through official streaming sites, or from what I call “the usual sources” – the various locations online which may or may not sport an eye-patch, peg-leg and parrot on their shoulder. But Quarantine was not present in any of them. Tracking it down wasn’t exactly hard: but it did mean actually spending money on Ebay, something which took me far longer than it should have. I mean, the original stub for this was posted in January 2013, almost eight years ago. But, I finally bit the bullet, and forked out $11.89 (including postage) for the DVD. It’s now available through the usual sources. Future generations are welcome.

Let’s begin with the IMDB synopsis: “After terrorists release a mysterious virus on a small village killing all of its inhabitants, the President of the United States charges a team of scientists, led by Dr. Galen Bronty, to find a cure before the plague wipes out all humanity. He then goes into quarantine on a northwestern island to govern the country from a safe zone. But when a terrorist storms the island in a jumbo jet full of children, it’s up to the President to somehow stop the spread of the plague before it’s too late.” Bronty is played by Kinski, and I have to say, she does a decent job of getting her tongue around some fairly heavy scientific exposition, involving DNA sequences, antibodies, etc. There are some actors and actresses who do not make convincing scientists, e.g. Charlie Sheen (The Arrival) or Denise Richards (The World is Not Enough). Nastassja is not among them.

If the film has an overall moral, what I took away from it, is that you shouldn’t have kids. They are simply more trouble that they are worth. The rug-rats in this movie are 2-for-2 in illustrating the point. Dr. Bronty’s daughter, Maxine (Brittney Irvin) is your generic teenage brat, whining about Mommy not spending enough time with her. Well, maybe Mommy is busy saving the world from biological terrorism. Did you ever think about that, huh? Oh, it’s all fun and games when Dr. Bronty takes Maxine along on a training exercise, to illustrate a weakness in airport security, as we see in the movie’s opening scene. But then the scientist has join her colleagues in the Atlanta CDC, desperately researching a cure for an apocalyptic virus. That brings an end to quality mother-daughter time.

Meanwhile, even being President of the free world doesn’t get you a pass, when it comes to having a daughter that doesn’t understand you. President Kempers (Hamlin) gets grief from daughter Lucy (Carter), because he won’t bail on a state dinner with the Chinese Prime Minister, to help her move into her college room at Duke. She then ditches her Secret Service bodyguard to hang out with her boyfriend. So when the plague hits the fan, she can’t be found. As a result, Lucy and mother Maddy (Hogan) miss the lockdown cut-off, and are trapped on the mainland after Dad goes into presidential quarantine on a Pacific Northwest island. See what you did, young lady? I trust you’ve learned a valuable life lesson.

Outside of the family drama, things here kick off after American intelligence discovers a village which has been wiped out by a biological attack, in an apparent test of a weapon. The President authorizes a mission to take out the facility in Eastern Europe that produced the virus for the “Gleaming Sword” group. This may seem like a Muslim name, but even in these pre-9/11 days, it appears oddly non-specific. In fact, based on the evidence of the movie, it appears to consist of one bloke, peeved at the US government over the collateral damage from a drone strike. The facility is successfully destroyed, Dr. Bronty going along to secure a sample of the bioweapon, so it can be studied and an antidote and/or vaccine created. But the plane carrying the samples back to America, crashes at Heathrow, releasing the contents.

Fortunately, the military had half-inched some of the virus, giving Bronty something to work with back in Atlanta. From a late 2021 viewpoint, it’s interesting to see the fictional depiction of a large-scale outbreak of a lethal illness with “flu-like” symptoms, and compare it against the COVID-19 reality. Society does come under pressure here, though the budget doesn’t extend to depicting much more than a shuttered storefront or two. While the disease here is considerably more lethal, infrastructure collapse is almost instantaneous, with the CDC quickly forced onto its back-up generators. Worse, they have to go into lockdown after a breach releases the virus inside the facility exposing Galen and the other researchers. Will she survive? Will they be able to find a cure?

Meanwhile, the President has issues of his own. The plane of kids mentioned above breaches the no-fly zone, actually flown by a humanitarian, rather than a terrorist. He’s taking a dangerous gamble that Kempers will not shoot them down, and he’s right – though the runway is then blown up, to stop anyone else from repeating the stunt. However, also on board is the one (1) member of Gleaming Sword, who takes the kids hostage and demands a meeting with the President. That’s not Kempers only problem, for Lucy has gone AWOL again. This time it’s to join her boyfriend, who is tending to the sick back at Duke. Maddy goes off in pursuit of the First Daughter, and ends up infected. So much for that “learning a valuable life-lesson” thing, even if this does add additional impetus to the narrative of Dr. Bronty’s search for a treatment.

This actually starts off very well: the first twenty minutes are among as good as I’ve seen in the TV movie genre. This was a time before CGI was easily available, so things like the destruction of the terrorist facility actually involve blowing stuff up, and it looks impressive. The crash of the plane at Heathrow is also executed impressively, in a way that’s positively cinematic. Unfortunately, it can’t sustain this, with the soap-opera elements gradually rising up to swallow the action/thriller ones whole. Hamlin does make for a good President – I’d vote for Kempers, over anyone in the past couple of elections! – but outside of him and Kinski, the supporting cast are forgettable. Have to say, Irvin is a spot-on choice to play Nastassja’s daughter, and short of choosing Sonja Kinski, the makers could hardly have done better. In general though, you can see why this one was, if not lost, largely forgotten.

Dir: Robert Mandel.
Star: Craig T. Nelson, Lynne Thigpen, Roger Aaron Brown, Nastassja Kinski.

This was an almost lost item, which I seemed incapable of tracking down either official or through “the usual sources.” I eventually stumbled across a complete set of The District episodes while I was playing around with the Kodi app on my phone – but by the time I got round to watching it, the particular Kodi repository had been shut down. I re-installed another repo, and was just getting ready to look for it again. So, I googled the title to remind me of the season and episode number… and discovered it had been uploaded to DailyMotion in the meantime. I’m glad to cross it off the list, though it would be a stretch to call this worth the effort.

The District is an American crime drama and police procedural television series which aired on CBS from October 7, 2000, to May 1, 2004. The show followed the work and personal life of the chief of Washington, D.C.’s police department. I begin with this information – shamelessly cribbed from the Wikipedia page about the show – because I had never heard of it before seeing it on Nastassja’s filmography. I had certainly never seen an episode, which perhaps explains why I was largely bemused by watching this solitary entry. It was the eighth episode on the second season, originally airing on November 24, 2001.

Kinski’s role is an odd one, entirely unconnected to the main story, which is about a gang of designer purse snatchers, preying on Washington transit riders. But that seems to be the way the show works, and it’s not necessarily unique in this approach among American police television. The individual episodes will focus on a particular case, but the investigation will also interlaced with other plot arcs, which may run across the course of multiple shows. The 44-minute running time here, for example, also included a thread about a cop who receives a gift of a watch, which may break department rules about such things; and also a more light-hearted subplot concerning the proceeds of an office football pool.

She plays Trish, an old flame of the main character, Jack Mannion (Nelson) – he refers to her as an ex-fiancee, though it feels more like an Overly Attached One-Night Stand to me. She turns up in his office at the police department, having heard that his ex-wife, Sherry, with whom he still has an on and off relationship, has left him. Initially, Trish tries to convince Jack that she is entitled to a share in his restored tugboat, the Betty-O, on which he lives. He dismisses Trish’s claim as one of her “delusional episodes,” but she’s completely unfazed by his rejection, and shows up on the boat [I’d say, for a chief of police, his security protocols seem almost non-existent!]. She’s cooking him dinner, which leads to the following exchange:

“Is there rabbit in there?”
“Mmm, Fatal Attraction. I loved that movie”
“You are that movie…”

As the above suggests, Jack makes absolutely no bones about the fact that he considers Trish to be thoroughly unhinged. It’s a product of its era, I suspect: these days, it seems less likely a TV series would use apparent mental illness as comic relief. Part of me also finds it a bit rich, considering that on the basis of this episode, Mannion seems to have issues of his own. For example, he dresses up as Geppetto – fake mustache and all – in order to make a point to one of his officers. That doesn’t exactly seem normal behavior for a chief of police, though the character was apparently loosely based on Jack Maple who was a New York City deputy police commissioner, and helped create the series.

There are four scenes together in total; three on the boat and one in the office, which makes me think Nastassja probably didn’t have to leave Los Angeles for this job [despite its setting, the show is mostly filmed in LA, save for necessary exterior shots]. The third is probably the most poignant, as Jack tries to explain to Trish that, despite Sherry’s absence, she remains his soulmate, and not someone who can be replaced: “I’m always going to love her.” There’s a fleeting moment where it looks like he has broken through, finally making her understand, and the range of emotions flickering across Trish’s face is palpable. Then it’s gone, as the middle-aged manic pixie dreamgirl returns. [It’s another older man scenario, with Nelson approaching 17 years older than Kinski]

It includes the final scene in the episode, with Trish finally apparently getting the hint and leaving. Though even there, the couple bicker about whether or not Jack is going to take her to the airport. It does feel a little forced, and you wonder how the hell these two people got together to begin with, let alone what led Jack to propose marriage,. It does feel almost as though Trish was intended to be some kind of recurring character, This episode seems more like they are introducing her, rather than providing a fully-formed arc. However, there are some other famous names who also appeared only once, including Ernest Borgnine, John Savage and Danny Trejo, so it may just be the series’s approach to some of its guest stars.

I do have to say, while competent enough, there’s not much here which would compel me to watch any further episodes. Outside of Mannion’s eccentricities, there was little in this forty-five minutes to differentiate it from the host of other shows featuring police departments and their work. I’m quite surprised it lasted as long as four seasons, especially buried in the death slot which is Saturday evening. Nice of the makers to think of Kinski though, and it was probably one of her more high-profile TV appearances, albeit amounting to less than ten minutes, all told. And below, you can find all ten of them.