"The Andromeda Strain" is a collaboration between two of the most genius professionals in their own area of expertise. Around the late 60s/early 70s, Robert Wise already was a multi-experienced director who helmed a variety of genres, including Sci-Fi and horror. Michael Crichton was still a young author, and this was his first novel, but he wrote it when he was still studying at Harvard Medical School and thus a subject expert on the matter of meticulous scientific research. The result of their collective work is one of the most unconventional and - admittedly - often difficult to watch Sci-Fi movies ever, but simultaneously also one of the purest, intense, disturbing, and utmost intelligent landmarks in cinematic history.

Why is it unconventional and difficult to watch? Well, "The Andromeda Strain" isn't exactly a Sci-Fi motion picture like most people imagine them to be. It's slow-paced, full of medical slang and complex dialogs, and the set-pieces are sober and neutral. The story doesn't feature any gigantic slimy alien monsters, oddly designed spaceships or famous A-listed actors heroically battling galactic enemies with laser guns. Especially considering its release during the era when Sci-Fi cinema began booming, it is quite unusual but courageous to make a film that solely revolves on script-strength and brooding atmosphere. Why is it pure and disturbing and intelligent Sci-Fi? Because Crichton's novel challenges the viewer to think far beyond the fixed limits of our well-known Sci-Fi culture. What is the most realistic doom-scenario to overcome earth, you'd say? An all-destructive and virulent extraterrestrial attack, like in "War of the Worlds" or "Independence Day"? Or perhaps that, somewhere in outer space, there exists a microscopically small germ that promptly mutates into a deadly virus when entering the earthly hemisphere? Hollywood movie producers know what is the most spectacular scenario to turn into a movie, for sure, but which of the two is the most unsettling?

Besides all the intellectual superiority, "The Andromeda Strain" also remains an incredibly tense and mesmerizing film to behold. When a space satellite crashes back onto earth, almost the entire population of a nearby little town literally drops dead at whatever it is they are doing. Promptly, four eminent scientists are escorted to a top-secret governmental underground facility in the desert to examine the unearthly substance attached to the satellite. The safety procedures and careful research processes form the main part of the film, but the exploration of the stricken town - Piedmont, New Mexico - represents the most haunting parts of the film. Everything aspect of the film is flawless but also so serene! Like the visual effects by Douglas Trumball, the music by Gil Mellé, and the performances by relatively unknown but excellent cast members, like James Olson and Kate Reid. As I said already, a genius film.

A satellite from the SCOOP project has crashed into the desert town of Piedmont, the SCOOP project basically entails that the satellite scoops outer space for any alien micro-organisms. After the crash all the residents of Piedmont are killed with the exception of a baby and an old gentleman booze hound. Mankind is on the verge of being destroyed by a leaked alien virus, so a crack team of scientists are gathered in the hope of containing and understanding the virus before the world gets devoid of human life!

Taken from the novel by Michael Crichton, this film is a wonderful lesson in tension building as we follow the scientists through a carefully structured sci-fi plot that will eventually become a race against time thriller. What makes The Andromeda Strain stand out against other genre pieces is the astute and believable approach to the subject matter, we are (in the main) in the presence of proper scientists. There's no super hero tricks forthcoming from these people, these are sensible honest intelligent folk using their combined knowledge to hopefully save the planet? A masterstroke from the makers is that they used largely unknown actors for the film, this gives the story an added grounded believable factor, thus a very useful way of drawing the audience into the drama unfolding. The direction from Robert Wise is very clued in for serio narrative drive, the set design for the underground research facility is top notch, and the actors all give stoic and intelligent performances.

However, it's not without a niggle, for after the excellence of the films first two thirds, it's disappointing to find that the final act reverts to type, which somehow seems misplaced given what the viewer has just been through. Don't get me wrong, it's a fine sequence of events that fuels the dramatic slant, but it comes off as just a bit too glossy in light of the preceding structure. Still, The Andromeda Strain is an intelligent, smart, mature, and knowing film that is standing the test of time for being a great piece of science fiction cinema. 8/10

The 1970s were a time before some of the "intelligentsia" of American culture began to abandon rationality and reject science on pseudo-ethical grounds. Unsurprisingly, then, 1970s sci-fi is often better informed by science than the sci-fi of later decades, and it is also often more thoughtful and intelligently written. The Andromeda Strain is one of the best hardcore sci fi epics from a decade which brought us such genre classics as 2001, Solyaris, Silent Running, and the original Rollerball. Unlike most of these films, however, Andromeda Strain does not strain believability beyond its bounds, nor does it indulge in metaphysical tangentializing or philosophical moralizing.

Developed from what I consider to be Michael Crichton's best book, the Andromeda Strain takes its cue directly from the hard realism of that book, along with its documentary style and scientific background research. Though aspects of the plot defy biological probability, if not law, almost the entire film is plausible. Also borrowed from Crichton's writing is the general point the film attempts to make - one which is present in nearly all of Crichton's work - that along with technological advance comes risk. Fortunately, however, this story does not reach the near-paranoid levels of technophobia which sometimes appear in later works.

A great ensemble cast full of not easily recognized character actors represent a team of scientists called together to contain and manage a deadly virus-like organism which has arrived on a crashed space research probe. The virus has already wiped out an entire town, and now the scientists must work at a breakneck, sleepless, pace to determine what the organism is, how it spreads and grows, and how it can be killed or contained. Their only major clues, it seems, are an old man and a baby who survived the initial outbreak. To avoid spoilers, I will avoid any further details regarding the plot.

The only aspect of the film which really seems dated is the strange electronic soundtrack, which, at times, seems more derivative of 1950s sci-fi than more modern stuff. Suffice to say that this is one of the best uses of the 'as-it-happens' documentary film-making style. The entire film is delivered in a very refreshingly straightforward manner, with believable dialog, actors that look like real people, and a pace that builds constantly from start to finish.

Highly recommended.