Kakaze:

The original book and movie were based on science and supplied their thrills through explanations of what can happen when science breaks down and/or goes wrong. The new mini series, however, replaces the science with technobabble that would make Brannon Braga proud, inserts a wholly new and useless character designed only to explore the wholly new and useless government conspiracy plot, and also dumps a mysterious wormhole from TEH FUTAR! into the mix as the origin of Andromeda. Top that off with boring characters, marginal acting, huge contradictions in plot, some of the most ridiculously crappy CGI ever, and the inevitable threat of TERRORISTS!--which actually goes nowhere and was just dropped into the movie to make it more relevant to the year 2008. I mean, we have to make sure everyone knows it could possibly have been done by TERRORISTS! right? Forget this pathetic abortion of a movie and check out the original instead. The original has a better plot, better acting, sets, and much better special effects.

SyfyFreak:

This remake of the original Andromeda Strain is a piece of political propaganda for an election year. This movie starts out with promise of being as good as the original and then abruptly makes a 90 degree left turn. The real confusing thing in the story is the time travel paradox, if it were not for the time paradox there would be no Andromeda strain but the time paradox is necessary in this propaganda piece to show you who the enemies of the people are, any one who isn't way to the left of normal. The hero's are, left wing media mole Benjamin Bratt, in his usual lack luster performance, who heads up the top-secret project while being a whistle blower. Erick McCormack, the left wing crack smoking "I don't want no rehab' journalist. And of course the true heroic man of the hour and the only person the left wing eco-terrorist can trust is Rick Schroder, the in the closet gay Army Officer. The enemies of the people are the President of the United States, The United States Military, and a conservative white Senator with a strong military agenda and, of course, Corporate America.

wni 203199:

Good overall effort from the cast and the story line is interesting. There is a lot of unnecessary violence in the form of point blank shootings. Most of the killing seems contrived and adds very little to the story. There is also some drug use that is yet again unnecessary to the main story. Michael Crichton can write and he props this miniseries up as much as possible. However, the miniseries is technically weak and not very suspenseful. You might do better to watch "Outbreak".

4dae2b8fc6:

I always like watching mini series in hope that they will follow a book more closely then a 2 hour movie. Some do and well some don't. And Andromeda Strain is one that doesn't. I don't blame the actors,I believe they did what they could with the script they had. The subplots had to many side stories going on. And I never really felt an urgency in the whole story. Yes this was a made for T.V. Movie that I felt never reached a level above a B movie standard. This is worth a look if you have watched the original and like to compare the two.

robowriter:

TV. Early press said the remake was hamhanded, brassy, and preoccupied with virulent as well as violent body counts. (These charges are true.) I watched it anyway -- and I'm glad I did. For one thing, the top-secret Wildlife biomedical laboratory deserved better than 1960s computer technology -- and this remake delivered on many of my dreams: x-ray-film-like laptops, virtual-3D touchscreens, natural-language voice-based command-and-response, etc. The acting was yeomanlike -- unimaginative, yet no one tripped over their shoelaces, with the most talent glimmering through Gen. Mancheck (Andre Braugher) and Dr. Angela Noyce (Christa Miller). The script proved better than I expected at presenting seminal scientific concepts from the book and a few updated issues (esp. national security -- though a black hole was singularly unnecessary). The Clinton/Bush mashup of a president (Ted Whittal) had faith in his star scientists' professional acumen and a great line ("I'm not going to risk going to war on some half-baked evidence and a hunch") as did Dr. Noyce about our linearity ("If we could examine all of our choices like a box of chocolates, what would we have at stake?"). TV reporter Jack Nash (Eric McCormack) had the meatiest role, even if he was supposed to be in rehab for cocaine abuse and fell off the wagon. Having escaped a nefarious government assassin yet facing imminent microbial death, he ventures a prayer and forswears drugs. A pot-smoking good-ol' girl fleeing the same death later offers him a toke: ?No, I took a vow.? The climactic ending in the Wildfire facility gets mangled with two unnecessary scientists? deaths and a rescue crawl that?s both mawkish and gruesome. Explosions all look hokey as do the microbial advance and retreat (followed by the inevitable ?We did it!?). The wrapup is a wakeup call as to how politicians are never content to leave science to the scientists. I give the classic 4.5 stars and this fairly riveting remake 4 stars.

w00f:

Unrelentingly cheesy and trite, this mish-mash of scientific word salad leaps from wormholes to sulfur-based life forms without ever stretching a single brain cell. The acting is ridiculous in most cases and the writing is unbelievably shallow. This TV melodrama bears little resemblance to Michael Crichton's classic SciFi tale. A few good action sequences save it from the absolute bottom of the heap, but it's neither fun nor thought-provoking. Watch for the slow-mo thumb toss and the overwrought ending.

VJ Purplequeen:

I thought this was an interesting conspiracy story, complete with the evil powerful government type human and alien threat mix. Lots of shooting and dying, but not a lot of blood and gore. Enough, if your interested in that, but this one didn't gross me out too much. I really enjoyed the story, the premise, the sci fi elements (believeable scientific babble and the futuristic technology) and that earth was saved. It was plenty suspenseful, even with some of the rather fantastical plot holes. One has to suspend their belief a lot, but in this flick its pretty easy to do. If there were a sequel, which the end leaves wide opened, I'd watch. 3.8, almost a 4 from me. 4/8

RedSun21:

Like a long episode of the X-Files without Mulder or Scully. Some good effects and an intensifying disaster make this a passable short mini-series. Eric McCormack's reporter character seemed like an annoying add-on at times. It starts off fast, but slows down then tries to pick it up again at the end.

MuthrGoose:

Full of holes. This awful remake has so many plot holes it is completely devoid of making any sense. I expected much better from something executively produced by Ridley Scott. The direction was decent but the story gave no foundation for anything to be built upon including the acting which was laughable. I wish I would have read the other poor reviews before I sat and watched 177 minutes of this complete waste of time. The half baked events make as much sense when put together as pieces to a puzzle blindly hammered together by an angry fist. The ending, amazingly, was even more ridiculous and made less sense than every moment that preceded it.

JT 944823:

The book was awesome as was the 1971 movie but this version isn't. Its not gripping, its long and drawn out, wandering all over the personal lives of the characters versus focusing on the critical situation at hand. It may appeal to some, but to me. It definitely lost the original intent and message that the book conveyed. I felt it had a lot of potential but feels like the writers had to come up with filler material to make it fit into the 4 hour mini series.

083e245871:

I liked this a lot. It was different enough from the 1971 movie to feel new and of course it was updated to be modern as of 2008. There are several interconnected conspiracies running through the plot and I thought they did a poor job of developing the back stories. The assumption by the producers seems to be that people are corrupt and that the viewer is not interested in the details, only the evil doings of the corrupted. I think a peek into the conspiracies would have added to the story. A similar complaint was that the "henchmen" carried out their duties far beyond reason. One example is a couple of snipers trying to kill a guy land in the midst of the virus and everything is dying around them and they don't seem to care, choosing to focus on their job. This seemed unrealistic to me. However, all that aside, I liked the miniseries.

BL in Springfield, MO:

Although I appreciated the amount of gore this had for a made-for-TV movie, and the initial idea of a "smart virus" from space, this remake ultimately just got too full of itself to support it's own weight. Apparently, the writers thought they needed to show everyone how intelligent they were by cramming every hokey science theory and next gen technology idea into one plot. "Worm holes? Check." "Buckey Balls? Check." "Let's do something clever with ASCII code..." "But wait! We'll add a bleeding-heart environmentalist twist to it, too. That'll teach 'em!" Give me a break! Abandoning the one interesting thing they left you with in part 1, part 2 gained no momentum and started piling on the previously mentioned scientific nonsense. It also touched on (but did not explore) some typical TV subplots. The ending, as you might guess, was anticlimactic, uneventful and predictable. Kudos to Ricky Schroder for playing a homosexual grunt, though, even if he DID play it exactly like the Mike Doyle character he portrayed in 24...

j_chytown:

Made for TV! It wasn't bad.. it was better than most SciFi Channel films, but a couple of items annoyed me. It should not have been called "The Andromeda Strain", instead, they could have called it "Andromeda Strain II" because they really went off of the rails of the original story. They added some questionable plot motivators but they also added some interesting subplots that I enjoyed. It was minor, but there was a pervasive religious undertone to the film too, especially in the second DVD. The original film (which sticks closely to the book) is much scarier simply because of its stark quality and innocent viewpoint. While the original film actually does a good job of dealing with the uncertainties of do-or-die science in a remote and desolate location, this one merely nods to the science and places external (government and military) events in the forefront with the wildfire project. I also disliked the "trekian" computer that seemed to understand exactly what the team wanted in natural language voice recognition. All in all, I am not sorry that I watched it, but I expect much better from a Scott/Crichton recipe.