'Fatal Contact' should be quarantined
I could start this review by toying ruthlessly with the title of ABC's new TV movie, ''Fatal Contact." Any time a word like ''fatal" appears in the name of a big old stinker, it demands to be redeployed by the critic. As in: ''Contact" is fatal. Or, more concisely, ''Fatal" is.
But ''Fatal Contact," which arrives with the thrilling subtitle ''Bird Flu in America," doesn't deserve to be used for fun. Folks, this is an excruciatingly dull movie, and having a good time writing about it could mislead. This piece of weakly constructed sensationalism, which premieres tonight at 8 on Channel 5, is so unscary it almost serves as a kind of promo for the poultry industry. If the avian flu is going to be this unbelievable and jerky, I choose chicken.
The idea of the ''Fatal Contact" script, seemingly written during morning recess by Ron McGee of ''Atomic Twister" un-fame, is that the human spread of the flu, known as H5N1, would be bad. Really bad. Really, really bad. So bad that ''bad" doesn't even begin to explain just how bad it will be. And that's the only idea here. An American businessman in Hong Kong returns home to Virginia, coughs, and voila! The streets are mad with looting citizens, body bags are being dumped into pits, neighborhoods are quarantined, and helpless old ladies are starving to death.
And the phones are ringing. ''Fatal Contact" is one of those TV products that resorts to having phones ring in the background to keep us alert. As the epidemic gets worse, and as the movie gets worse, the ringing gets more insistent.
The filmmakers, including director Richard Pearce, are clearly hoping to scare up easy Nielsen ratings for ABC during May sweeps. Even though the whole world is coughing to death in ''Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America," the subtitle tries to give a particular sense of urgency to American viewers. Also meant to stir Americans: a slight of the French, who are withholding a vaccine from the United States just because, well, they're French. Of course, they're probably giving it all to the Iraqis.
Not coughing in ''Fatal Contact" is Joely Richardson from ''Nip/Tuck," who plays Dr. Iris Varnack, a brilliant epidemic expert. Varnack is one of the few authorities handling the crisis, flying all over tarnation and advising important men that the flu will ''rip apart the fabric of society." Alas, poor Richardson is miscast. Her strength as an actress is worry, and yet here she is meant to be thick-skinned and immune to hysteria. She puts on her best ''coolly diagnostic" hat, adopting the restrained affect of Dr. Melfi in ''The Sopranos," but the hat is woefully ill-fitting. Scott Cohen is also on the flu-fighting team as a governor who's callous until a personal loss awakens his conscience.
''Fatal Contact" tries to blend emotion into its disaster scenario by showing the tragedy and heroism of a few characters. But I use the word characters loosely. The ordinary people in this movie make you wonder if the avian flu is going to turn us into pod-people before it kills us. Justina Machado, so vivid on ''Six Feet Under," is wasted as a New York City nurse. Ann Cusack is the personality-free widow of the dead businessman. You won't care about them. Maybe that's why the movie doesn't have a proper conclusion so much as it just stops. Apparently even the filmmakers didn't care by the end.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. 
