Parts Per Billion

"Nothing is left. The radio stopped. There's no more planes or helicopters. When's the last time we heard anything other then birds?" After a man made virus escapes the entire world is threatened. The fast moving and fast acting bug is bringing about the end of the world with no hope for a cure. Three couples each deal with it in their own way. Even though their stories and experiences are different they realize that life revolves around one thing, love. For some reason ideas and plots for movies seem to come in clumps and no matter what they get made back to back to back. Armageddon and Deep Impact came out very close together. So did Volcano & Dante's Peak, Olympus Has Fallen & White House Down, and Legend Of Hercules and soon Hercules. This movie is part of the new up and coming trend, movies about a man made virus that causes the apocalypse. Contagion, It's A Disaster, Goodbye World and the more recent ones just to name a few. All of them have their good qualities but like so many copy cat movies they are never as good as the original. This one is no exception. Overall, good movie with a very good cast but it is very depressing so you must be in the mood for it. Not as good as Contagion. I give this a B-.

Essentially, there is a virus that is gonna kill everyone. there are several couples in the film, and they tell each other how much they love each other, over and over again, for one and a half hours. I kept thinking something was going to happen.

The lines are pretty poor, they attempt to sound really deep and meaningful, but in reality, if you have seen a film about couples in love, you will have heard all the same garbage before.

It includes lines such as, I love you, I have never met anyone like you, I'm so lucky to have you, I never want to lose you. Yep, all classic lines that even someone who has just started learning English as a second language, could muster in an attempt to perform a Nigerian 419 Scam.

Brian Horiuchi's "Parts per Billion" is about rising chaos as trade winds blow toxins from the Middle East westward, but the focus is on the characters and how they try to get on with their lives amid the disorder. I interpret this to mean that the movie's gist is that we have to avoid giving into sheer hysteria when something bad happens. We've seen how psychotic people can get when they're scared, whether with 9/11 or with Ebola. As for the movie itself, most of it came across as a little slow. I did think that "Outbreak" (which emphasized the biology) and "Contagion" (which depicted the government agencies as competent*) were better.

*This is in stark contrast to the movies that portray the rugged individual saving the day.

This movie is not sci-fi and it's not an end of the world disaster movie as the title seems to suggest. I think its abysmal rating is because people are going into it thinking it's a certain kind of end of the world, doom and destruction movie and then they find out it's not that at all. Not by a long shot.

This is a romance/drama film that tries its darnedest to be deep.

This is one of those interconnected drama movies along the veins of: Crash, Magnolia, The Air I Breathe and Happiness.

So if you're into that sort of style, plotting and character driven storytelling you'll almost definitely like this. If not, you'll most likely find it tedious, boring and depressing.

"Parts Per Billion" is a film written and directed by Brian Horiuchi. It's very well made—with some really nice acting. However, it's also one of the most depressing films you could ever watch and I don't think most folks would want to see a film quite like this—especially since it seems very obvious where all this is headed.

When the film begins, you learn that some sort of biological weapon was unleashed in the Middle East. Soon, folks in that part of the world start dropping dead and it seems like the weapon will spare no one in the immediate area. However, when the effects start spreading globally, it seems like perhaps no one will be left alive. However, this film is not so much about this directly but how a few individuals react to all this. Some fight desperately to survive, some ignore the inevitable and some can't stand to face life in this post-apocalyptic world and are ready to just give up. Naturally, these scenarios are depressing and the film keeps cutting back from one story to the next.

The film stars a few famous folks—with some really nice performances by veteran actors Frank Langella and Gena Rowlands as well as Josh Hartnett and Rosario Dawson (among others). The direction is also good, though in a few scenes I was annoyed by a modern filming technique which I think is way overused—the unsteady cam (it can make you nauseous if you see too much of this on the big screen). But the combination of the music, writing, acting and director's touch is quite good.

I am going to make this review rather short. Suffice to say if you like Robin Cook stories about pandemics, then you'll probably enjoy "Parts Per Billion" (well, enjoy might not be the right word for this). However, it's a lot more depressing than most of Cook's doom and gloom scenarios—much! Well made but so thoroughly unpleasant I am not sure who would really want to see this one. My advice is see it if you want, but if you are suffering from depression or are worried that this one might make it tough for you to sleep, I suggest you try something else. Well done but awful to watch at times.