Science fiction in the subgenre of the fondly remembered The Satan Bug and The Andromeda Strain: killer virus on the loose, the future of mankind in doubt. The desire in this case to push the premise nearer to reality — nearer to the nonfiction best-seller The Hot Zone, not to mention nearer to ones from the self-help shelf such as You Just Don't Understand and Do I Have to Give Up Me to Be Loved by You? — results in a somewhat slowish start, notwithstanding the superfluous boom-boom from a preludial battle zone in Zaire. In particular, it delays the can't-miss stage of development where the initial alert escalates into all-out alarm: too late, too little. The detective work at that stage, and after, is simplified to the point of incomprehensibility, as if the viewer lacks the proper security clearance to be put fully in the picture. (See, for the strongest possible contrast, The Andromeda Strain.) And as the race against the clock becomes more desperate — which is to say, as the hero's ex-wife contracts the virus, and as the stock military boogeymen dispatches a bomber to wipe out the entire town of Cedar Creek, U.S. A. — the plotting becomes more perfunctory. Still, the movie probably will fill the bill for the contemporary sensibility that asks to "follow" a plot only in the sense of physically getting dragged around by it, preferably at high velocity and volume. (Cue the copters.) Kevin Spacey makes a nice contribution as the resident wiseacre of the Army's disease-control unit, though his ultimate fate is forgotten in the pileup of triumph upon triumph near the finish line. Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, Donald Sutherland; directed by Wolfgang Petersen. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd