Plague City: SARS in Toronto (2005) Online

They turned a significant page or two of Canadian history into a reasonably good movie but it was somewhat overwrought. The shots of deserted Toronto streets, like something from "On The Beach", were a little much. It was never like that. It's also mystifying why in doing a factual docu-drama, they fictionalized the main characters and the locations. There is no "Toronto Memorial Hospital." Those scenes were shot at North York General, which indeed was a SARS hotbed. Similarly the chief health official in the movie was a fictitious character rather than Toronto Medical Officer Of Health Dr. Shiela Basrur, who was the heroine of the saga. (Dr. Basrur is now the provincial MOH.) Even the local electronic media (with the exception of CTV) were fictional. All these things detract from what otherwise might have been a very solid film.

To find this movie interesting, I think you've got to live in Toronto or at least Ontario. I couldn't picture myself watching this movie in it's entirety if the city captured by SARS was Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta or another place. Because I live in Toronto, and because I was here during the SARS crisis, it makes it interesting. Of course, this is no documentary. But I think it captures the state in which Toronto was in those summer months of 2003. Why us? When will it stop? We felt like pariah. And to make things worst, our very own Mel Lastman! But being from Toronto, I couldn't get pass the fact that they fictionalized almost everything, from the names of the doctors to the ones of the different hospitals affected.

Seen at home, in Toronto, on May 29th, 2005.

78/100 (**½)

I'm not one to expect too much out of Canadian TV, but this was the worst of the worst. Never mind being factually inaccurate in almost every way (medically and how things actually went) the acting was horrendous! If you're going to do a docu-drama then you have to use the real hospital names. Toronto Memorial?? And if you're going to be having actors portraying doctors and nurses doing medical procedures maybe they should have gotten some technical feedback so they didn't look like a total joke. The script was sappy and cheesy. Anyone that worked in the medical field during SARS, especially in the emergency area, got a good laugh out of the movie. If you want to watch a cheesy medical (sort of) badly done 'horror' flick - then watch it. Otherwise it's just plain offensive.