O Fator Hades

Movie runs for about 3 hours (as it was made for TV in two parts). Many portions were predictable in the second part. Though not as interesting as MI , it is worth watching once.

Lovers of action movies, fans of TV series like '24', readers of Robert Ludlum novels and similar have good chances to like this movie. It starts very well, with three mysterious virus-related deaths and a failed transaction of bio-weapons in Berlin that leaves as well its dose or corpses and evolutes quickly in a national crisis type of story, sort of a combination between 'Outbreak' and '24'.

The film is well done, well acted, the pace of the action does not trail almost at all and the story has the kind of logic you would expect from such stories. The principal problem may be the format - the two and half hours are too long for a feature film (although we have seen many similar length films lately on big screens) and two short for a TV series.

The professionalism of filming and acting lends more on the feature film side. Stephen Dorff in the principal role is credible and likable, and the principal critic one can bring to his act is that he looks so much as Jack Bauer. Mira Sorvino, Sophia Myles, Blair Underwood, Colm Meaney are all at their place and give credible acts. The only mis-casting seemed to me to be Anjelica Houston, which did not seem to be very comfortable as a Madam President.

It's not great cinema, just fair entertainment. Action movie fans should not miss this film, the other can skip it without problems.

Lt. Smith (Dorff) is a former member of Covert One a government spy agency. Smith is engaged to Dr. Amsden (Myles) both having worked on virus outbreaks in the past and present. When a hemorrhagic virus named Hades, first seen during the Soviet Afghan war, starts to pop up in the USA, the government tries to hide the potential threat while investigating where it came from and race to create a cure. Terrorists are involved in this action thriller, and infiltrate far easier than one would imagine. Rachel (Sorvino) a renegade Covert One operative and everyone she comes in contact with dies. As Covert One tries to untangle the web to nab all those involved, it becomes clear that the origin of this plot is a old enemy. A sad thing is that it reinforced negative racial and cultural stereotypes. But it was on par with B+ or A- movies.

Great literature its not, but Robert Ludlum is hard to beat as a writer of suspense thrillers and COVERT ONE: THE HADES FACTOR is no exception. Writing the screenplay with Ludlum is Elwood Reid and together they have created a very fast moving tale of the threats of bio-terrorism, found in Mick Jackson a perfect match for a director, and gathered an exciting cast to make this 160 minute made-for-television movie fly by at tremendous speed.

The premise of the film involves the worst of all 'weapons of mass destruction' - biological warfare - and here the topic is dealt with in a fascinating manner that pulls the US Government into the fold as implicated in the feasibility of such warfare. Not possible? Well, watch the film and make up your own mind.

Stephen Dorff plays Jon Smith, a one time covert agent for the White House, who becomes ensnarled in a plot to release the Hades Virus (a hemorrhagic lethal variant of the Ebola virus) to destroy the US. Smith's girlfriend Dr. Amsden (Sofia Myles) works for the government in the department that watches for measures just such as this. When the plot to sell the virus (is it possibly a virus known to the US government as the Scimitar project?) falls into the hands of an agent Rachel Russell (Mira Sorvino), the confusion of who is working for whom unfolds and all manner of agents and FBI, CIA, etc agents tumble around the President (Anjelica Huston) trying to identify the true culprits and the race to stop the dissemination of the deadly virus. In the many roles of varying consequence are actors Blair Underwood, Danny Huston, Colm Meaney, Josh Hopkins, etc.

The film is not without its gruesome elements: what depiction of bio-terrorism could avoid that? But the pace and the action sequences and the many locations of the film make the story propel along at a fascinating pace and the actors hold their own despite some predictable moments. Though this obviously is a fiction novel and a good one at that, there is a degree of truth in all fiction and any time writers and artists can help us understand possibilities, we are the better informed for it. Recommended viewing.

The first part of the series was good as a movie in general. But I, being a fan of the book, was disappointed that the story was loosely based on the Gayle/Ludlum work. I have wanted them to make a movie out of this series of books for some time now. And I guess in my anticipation and already thinking about how the movie would be, I was a little angry. I can understand the director fast forwarding to recent events, but changing some of the backgrounds of the characters and COLONAL John Smith being out of USAMRID. But again, as a movie, without reading the book, this was a good story. Sorry, I just had to find a faucet to vent my thoughts.