“Protocol 7”

Rating: 7/10

Director: Andrew Wakefield

Writers: Terri Rossio and Andrew Wakefield

Style: Drama Thriller

Trailer: youtube.com/watch?v=o-NyF2d_hVY

Time: 1 hour, 38 minutes

Rating: R

Review by Mike Szymanski

This is a thriller, and it’s frightening, because it’s real.

From the outset, I am not an anti-vaxxer, and do not support the anti-vaxxing campaign. I have always received my vaccinations, including my Covid shots, and I believe students should have vaccines to go to school. So, I’m not supportive of any of the conspiracy theories about vaxxing.

However, this is the telling of a story based on truth that shows some faulty manipulations of medical data involving the mumps vaccines. The story shows the chilling ways a drug company went to extreme measures to fake the success of a mumps vaccine that claimed a 96 percent success rate.

The most amazing thing is that the litigation is still going on more than a decade later.

It starts off with a family, a lawyer Alexis (Lexi) Koprowski and her husband Josh, adopting a child in a dangerous living situation from Africa. He was smart and bright, but when he came back with them to the United States and received all the vaccines he was supposed to get, he broke down in front of them. He wouldn’t speak, and became frightened of the smallest thing, and was put on the autistic spectrum.

Rachel Whittle is the actress portraying Lexi, and she plays the part with an amazing array of emotions, both angry and sad, desperate and defiant. She and actor R. Brandon Johnson play a couple whose personal lives are falling apart as she strives to find out what made her son ill, and tries every wacky diet she hears about to help the child. She also decides to take a case against a giant pharmaceutical company to hold them to blame for the faulty vaccine information that may have caused her son’s decline.

Eric Roberts portrays the head of that pharmaceutical company who tells his scientists that he needs their vaccine to show a 96 percent effectiveness, and there’s a deadline. Do it by any means necessary, and so they do.

The company cheats on every level. Even the doctors who are involved don’t believe their own data or anyone else’s. In one chilling scene, a doctor who has a newborn baby is furious that the hospital gave a vaccine shot to their child even though he insisted they do not do something like that. He doesn’t believe companies that have approved shooting mercury into newborn babies.

The real company, Merck, is mentioned as the one trying to defraud the government and is still under litigation while no one has been held accountable for the false reports.

It is former employees of Merck Pharmaceuticals that blew the whistle and did not destroy evidence of tests as they were ordered to do. The company is shown to have manipulated its clinical trials to enhance efficacy statistics on their mumps vaccine. The lawsuit which began in 2010 is still unresolved and the questions continue to linger, allowing for this low-budget independent that follows the case through depositions and whistleblower stories.

The actor winning the most awards for this film so far is Matthew Marsden as Dr. Adrian Jay. Actor Marsden started off in the popular British series “Coronation Street” and appeared in movies such as “Black Hawk Down,” “Helen of Troy” and he is a noteworthy singer who recorded a song with Destiny’s Child called “She’s Gone.”

Handsome, inappropriate, brusk, but caring is how Marden plays the role of Dr. Jay, and he has been recognized at a few film festivals for his stellar work. There is a great connection between Lexi, the mother, and this doctor, and it’s no doubt because of the chops of the actors who are fantastic in their roles.

Actors Alec Rayme and Josh Murray portray the doctors who are fixing the data and even using rabbit’s blood to skew the results. Christopher Scott plays their adopted son Inhale and he is also given some accolades at film festivals for his performance. Actor Harrison Tipping is David Kirk whose character had all the evidence destroyed so no one would ever find out the real story — so he thought.

Protocol 7 is a corporate thriller that exposes a weakness behind the corporate fixture and how even by exposing the company’s faulty release, no one is holding any responsibility in prioritizing profits over people, and how they are all “just following orders.”

Yet, over and over we are seeing how a child starts off healthy with a normal developmental path and then they get ill and are turned into a commodity

Andrew Wakefield, the director and writer, is a former physician who has been discredited for his claims. He drafted the script for the screenplay in 2012 and put the final touches on it with his friend, screenwriter Terry Rossio who was the screenwriter for film classics such as “Pirates of the Caribbean,” Shrek,” “Godzilla vs. King Kong, and “The Amazing Maurice.”
 
 “Making this film has provided an opportunity to bring to public attention, the reality of corporate fraud in the arena of public health and the courageous resolve of those who refuse to turn a blind eye,” Wakefield, the director and co-writer said. “It also highlights one of the most influential aspects of my clinical experience, the power and importance of a mother’s intuition.”

Wakefield created the movie’s heroine, Alexis Koprowski, as a compilation of the many mothers who have inspired the director over the past three decades fighting for the cause.

In a very dramatic scene that takes place at a school, the board says they are cutting the soccer program because of the rising costs to help special needs children, which are increasing every year. This may seem to be a simplified history of the issue, but it is reality.

The experts claim the anti-vaxxers are misinformed, and all the parents are told that all vaccines are required: “no vaccine, no forms, no school no exceptions.”

One mother yells at Lexi saying, “If you stop bringing these retard kids into this country then my son would still have his soccer program.”

Both the music and the editing contribute to the tense pacing of the movie. Even when one doctor goes out of the office for a jog, then another is rifling through his desk and papers for hidden evidence to help bolster the case against the drug company.

Some tender emotional moments do occur in this otherwise dour story, such as when Lexi’s autistic son does begin to speak.

This film already won many accolades, including Best Thriller from the Five Continents International Film Festival; Best Feature from the Athens International Montly Film Festival; Best Feature Film, Thriller Film, Director and Best Trailer from the Oniros Film Festival in April 2024 also Best Actor Matthew Marsden, Best Actress Rachel Whittle, and Best Theme and Best Soundtrack for Will Taylor.

The movie also won Best Actor for Marsden and Best Actress for Whittle at the Diamond Award Best Actor & Director Awards New York and Best Child Actor for Christopher Scott at the Silver Award Best Actor & Director Awards in New York. The Alternative International Film Festival honored the film with Best Mystery/Thriller, actor, actress and suspense film.

Although the end of the film explains that the issues are not settled and are on appeal, the director asks the audience to “further explore the important issues and decide accordingly. You are the jury.”

The film is being released in Regal Cinemas in more than 100 theaters on July 10, 2024, and then be available on streaming platforms.

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