Thirst (1998)

Overrated

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

THIRST is probably the most boring movie called THIRST. It's a wannabe-environmental disaster movie that would like to be thought of in the same breath as OUTBREAK, except as a small-budgeted TV movie it's lacking in every respect and just doesn't pass muster as a thriller.The major problem with this film is that it's so boring! A plot about an outbreak of deadly bacteria in a small town's water supply has the potential for much incident and high drama, but instead the writers (and there are too many of them) strive to make this as mundane as possible. Scenes of people dying from poisoned water are filmed in such a hokey way that I was laughing at them, as cruel as that sounds.The acting is routine and the characters even more routine, and have seemingly been picked out of a box of stereotypes. There's the heroic engineer character, who wouldn't you know it is a loving family man on the side; his glamorous wife, who happens to be a crusading doctor on the side; the evil mayor, who ignores warnings and does all in his power to cover everything up. And so it goes on.There's barely no drama, no characters to like or care about, nothing that hasn't been paraded out a zillion times already. In fact, there's no reason to like THIRST, as even by the shoddy standards of made-for-TV disaster movies it's a real timewaster.

This disaster movie is not like other disaster movies. Other disaster movies tend to follow a very rigid structure and not stray from it.First we meet the primary characters and we get to know them through scenes of "everyday life".Then the secondary characters whose "lives will be changed forever" are introduced.Lastly the "enemy" is introduced. Mostly in the form of the mighty bureaucrat who won't evacuate the city or close the beaches or whatever.This movie introduces one secondary character and uses tertiary characters for all the "unwashed masses" who are just supposed to die anyway. This enables the movie to concentrate on the efforts of the hero(es) to fix the situation and not have to show a lot of pointless drivel about dogs trapped in rain pipes and children being caught under buses.Plus, the characters are actually well drawn and the story is somewhat believable.I was entertained for an hour and a half and that's really the point, right?

Thirst was a fast paced medical thriller about an all too possible threat to one of earth's most precious resources - water. All the characters are sympathetic, with the notable exception of the Mayor (there are those who would happily force cryptosporidium infected water down his throat) and the subject is handled realistically. The actors, both male and female are convincing in their roles, particularly Adam Arkin who plays Robert Miller.A movie well worth seeing

Thirst seemed to be just another disaster movie. Our hero of the story, knowing the extreme danger and threat to the welfare of his family, should have gotten them out of town before the quarantine. The plant manager was incompetent as far as politics are concerned. Why didn't he know where the $15,000,000 went? The mayor was the biggest joke of the entire movie. A liar, a swindler, a finger pointer from the beginning. Sounds like another true politician to me. He should have been run out of town on a rail.