Contagion

Catch A Cold
Reposted from September 25, 2011

It figures a week after I've seen CONTAGION, director Steven Soderbergh's latest ensemble film, I come down with a cold and a slight cough. Nothing that can't be cured easily with two gel capsules and a glass of water, mind you; however, being sick this week did cause me to pause about the circumstances of my situation.

My dumb cold is nothing compared to the shellacking that Gwyneth Paltrow's character goes through within the first 20 minutes of the film: Rushed to the emergency room by hubby Matt Damon, Paltrow goes bug-eyed, convulses, and flatlines. Yep, Our Lady of GOOP goes down in the first half of the film. Much of Contagion is straight to the point with a sledgehammer, but the stakes are never so much higher as soon as Soderbergh kills off one of its leading stars.

Similar to the multi-threaded storytelling seen in TRAFFIC, CONTAGION tracks a global epidemic in multiple locales across 90-minutes-or-so. One...

If You Like Realism in Your Medical Thrillers....
This film is close to being a hybrid between a documentary and fictional tale. It is also an ensemble cast which can be difficult to pull off but this movie manages it. Basically, a very lethal virus sweeps the world, turning into a pandemic. There is HUGE loss of life until a vaccine is developed. The first case which brings it into the USA is Gwyn Paltrow who flies home from Asia to Minnesota. Within a very short time of being home with a cold, she goes into convulsions, is taken to the hospital and dies. Her son goes next and is replicates at swift speed after that. I never once felt that this was a science fiction film or one of these comic book based action films. It seemed to develop exactly as such a pandemic would develop around the world.

There is an all star cast. It would be nice to have more screen time for some of them but then we'd miss getting the bigger picture. People do panic, loot, try to escape, kidnap people for vaccine trades and so forth and so...

No Cliche here! I loved it!
For those who didn't think it was exciting enough, leave the "evil general" cliché edge-of-the-seat excitement to the other superficial movies - I'm glad Contagion was above that.

The intelligent unfolding of the realities of human nature in what would really happen if a deadly epidemic spread through the population was scary and thought provoking enough. There wasn't one scene in the movie that I couldn't imagine happening if this were real.

It was interesting, well written, great cast and acting, and perfectly told the story.

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