The new film “Contagion” made me feel icky. We humans are a disgusting race.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, “Contagion” is a sprawling epic that shows the global outbreak of an initially unknown lethal disease from several points of view around the globe.
Matt Damon is family man whose wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns ill from a business trip to Hong Kong. She seems to be the first sign of the new disease. This prompts the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) head (Laurence Fishburne) to prompt an investigation by a CDC detective (Kate Winslet). Also, a member from the World Health Organization (Marion Cottilard) is sent to Hong Kong to track the roots of the new virus. All of this covered by a controversial blogger (Jude Law).
There’s a lot going on in “Contagion,” as you can probably tell. But Soderbergh, for the most part, keeps the pacing and multiple storylines engaging.
Soderbergh likes his A-list casts, from “Contagion” to “Traffic” to “Ocean’s 11.” I don’t think I’m spoiling anything in saying that one of the bigger stars in the film drops dead within first ten minutes. If you’ve seen the trailers and spots on TV, you can probably guess who it is. Even the ones that drop dead from the virus in the first act are first-rate.
The supporting cast is recognizable, too. Maybe not by name, but they at least look familiar. See if you can spot the dad from “Malcolm in the Middle,” or the crook Batman had to fish out of Tokyo in “The Dark Knight.”
The beginning of the film is exhilarating, showing the initial stages of the outbreak in Tokyo and the initial mystique surrounding what is happening. Long shots show people exchanging contact and coughing and touching their faces me uncomfortable, and I almost wish it had kept up that level of discomfort throughout to pull me into the story just a little bit more.
After that, though, there’s not as much action as the promotional campaign may suggest. There’s some looting and pillaging when a cure finally comes to surface, but that’s it.
It’s more of a human drama for the most part. There’s a lot of talking in “Contagion.” When a movie is full of dialogue, it has to at least be interesting and well-made. And “Contagion” is both interesting and well-made. I had a feeling something like this could happen in just the way it was depicted in the film.
In the end, everything wraps itself up with a relatively happy ending, or about as happy as it could have. I wanted to see more of Marion Cottilard’s character though, not only because she is a beautiful presence to have on the screen, but because she’s mostly forgotten about until towards the end. I have a feeling some of her story arc was cut out for pacing.
I was also aggravated by one of the CDC’s decisions in the film. One of the characters is immune from the outbreak, but the CDC informs him they cannot synthesize his blood to find a vaccination because it would take too long and be too expensive.
Had the CDC at least tried to form a vaccination from the character’s blood, they would have had a better starting point than where they were origanally. According to the film’s timeline, the outbreak spawns about four months, and trying to get some sort of vaccine in the initial stages of the outbreak may have shaved of at least a little bit of time.
And as for the money, is that really a factor when millions of people are dying from a virus outbreak? It’s possible, and that rather upsets me.
But I can’t deny that “Contagion” is a well-acted, mostly engaging, mostly entertaining, mostly realistic “what-if?” film that has some power over the way you look at your health and well-being.
For example, my buddy and I went to CiCi’s Pizza for lunch afterwards, and I used some of the hand sanitizer available at the cash register. I know myself pretty well, and I wouldn’t have done that had I not seen “Contagion” beforehand.
