I saw this recently on DVD entitled THE HADES FACTOR, presented as a continuous feature film running 2 hours 38 minutes. I did not realize until I looked at IMDb that it started life as a TV miniseries entitled COVERT ONE: THE HADES FACTOR. It is based upon a novel by best-selling author Robert Ludlum, who is best known for the Bourne novels. Despite it having once been a mini-series, I shall call it 'the film', which is the form in which it has been released now. The film is not as good as it should be or might have been, but one reason for that may be that it is several years old and based on a pre-existing novel, so that it must all have seemed much more exciting and novel back then than it does now. Since that time we have become used to regular pandemic scares, swine flu, bird flu, SARS, or whatever, all of which have fizzled out after huge quantities of drugs were peddled by the big drug companies. Most of us now realize that pandemic scares are often engineered by or at least artificially enhanced, and hence partially engineered by, 'Big Pharma', which is the collective expression which is now used to describe the world's major pharmaceutical companies acting as a loose cartel. After all, if you have warehouses full of aging preventative or treatment drugs and can't dump them all on the Africans, then you can always create an artificial scare which panics Western governments into buying up your stock, and earn a few billion dollars easily. It is easy to bribe scientists, and I myself know some venal scientists personally who have been bribed by corporations to produce 'scientific findings' tailored to commercial purposes. It happens all the time and is often not even concealed. The Western world is now such a 'fear society' that it is easy to create panics, since everyone is fearful in general, and a state of high anxiety is present just about everywhere in our societies. 'It's all out there and it's going to get us' is the motto by which we are all now encouraged to live. It is difficult to meet a Westerner today who does not live in a state of suppressed fear and anxiety about something, or sometimes about everything. It is easier for elites to manipulate such nervous, jittery and demoralized people as we have become, because the population becomes like those persons experimented upon decades ago by psychological warfare experts; indeed, such techniques are routinely used by torturers of political prisoners all over the world at the present time to break down resistance. So in a sense the entire Western public is now essentially being held political prisoner and subjected to mass conditioning. Kafka has been surpassed. And one of the regular fears created by worldwide media campaigns, fed by corrupt 'scientists', are the recurring pandemic scares. Beware: viruses are on the loose! And in this film, the virus is a particularly deadly one called the Hades Virus, which has been made in an American military lab in connection with germ warfare research. The usual American soldiers used as guinea pigs in exposure experiments are found in this story, but here the variation appears in that they have been exposed to the virus in Afghanistan (certainly an unstable laboratory environment if ever there were one!) and hence some terrorists got their hands on some. Terrorists have had to answer for everything since we lost the Soviets. (At last, however, some new villains have appeared on the scene: casino bankers! But that has happened since this film was made. How long will it be now before we have a movie in which viruses are released by Goldman Sachs? Or was that what Hank Paulson was?) Stephen Dorff makes a very congenial action hero, and does very well at it. The only thing wrong with him is his annoying 'designer stubble'. Why is it that actors no longer consider it necessary to shave, but prefer to look such a mess? What extremes of vanity! And why do the producers and directors let them get away with it? Is it written in their contracts as a condition? Mira Sorvino makes a welcome relief from having to look at Dorff's chin. Sorvino has always been one of those endearing actresses who is everybody's darling, as she comes across as such a warm personality and we would all like to have her living next door. Here she tries to extend her acting range by playing an action heroine. She does it very well, but she is not able to conceal the fact that she is really very nice and would not really be like that except in a movie. The idea of Sorvino holding a gun and threatening to shoot is, well, slumming it for her. She deserves better films than this. But being in the occasional blockbuster action movie is meant to give a higher profile to an actress lest she become a niche darling, beloved only by the discerning audiences of New York and the Bay Area, who know a thing or two about good movies and who value her special qualities. If Dorff would only shave, it would be really good to see more of him at the trigger end of a gun, as he is made for that sort of thing and we believe in him when he faces danger. Somebody should make a buddy film with him and Matt Damon saving the world together, as I think they would click as a pair of action heroes. Damon is left-handed and Dorff is right-handed, so they could fire in every direction. And Mira Sorvino could then be the good sister or the loving wife or the clever scientist, or something more suitable to her nature than just an armed girl in a black suit.