Apparently, epidemic movies are the new war movies, because every-freaking-body is in Contagion. I guess it's because unlike a war movie, the actresses can play something other than the army wife? The cast includes such recognizable people as Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, John Hawkes, and....Demetri Martin?
This gives me an idea...in the sequel, Contagion 2, everyone is cured by Demetri Martin's convictions that laughter is the best medicine, so he hooks himself up to the world's largest set of speakers and tells his brand of offbeat and observational humor until the entire world gets better...or Comedy Central cancels him.
On to the review!
I can't talk too much about the plot without ruining everything for everyone forever, but director Steven Soderbergh gets his hooks in early. Contagion jumps around for the entire movie and only loosely connects the dots between all the characters, but he does a fantastic job of showing both the individual and global problems should an epidemic of such scale actually happen. Nobody is safe from death, and there were a few points where I thought 'Oh yeah, this guy's effed' yet nothing happens. The same holds true for the opposite. The only guarantee is that poor Gwyneth is totally dead, but that's in the trailer, so nyah.
Matt Damon plays the husband of the recently deceased, Mitch, and finds out that he is immune. His point of view fulfills the small-world perspective, while damn near everyone else works for the World Health Organization, Center for Disease Control or other government agencies. Jude Law is the lone exception, playing the conspiracy blogger and clearly enjoying himself. Oh, and in case you're curious, Demetri is a CDC employee who gets to wear one of the awesome body suits and handle the virus that is killing roughly one out of ten people.
The big problem with this film is the fact that it doesn't actually end. Shit happens and you're on the edge of your seat for over an hour, then shit stops happening for the last twenty minutes or so...and roll credits. From the beginning until the last half-hour, the movie is genuinely interesting. Every location has a different sub-plot and all the dialog is great. Then, once one character makes the game-changing decision for better or worse, the movie just...peters out. You get to say hello or goodbye to everyone one last time and then the movie ends.
If you like Soderbergh, movies that involve lots of people dying or accurate socio- and psycho-logical depictions of mankind freaking the hell out, then check the movie out. As for me, I'm going to make sure I see a super duper early show next week, because I damn near killed a dozen teenagers sitting behind me during this one. Fortunately the movie was engrossing enough that they shut up after the previews, but I'm pretty sure the one kid had a combination of Tourrettes, Aspergers and being a complete social douchetard.
For a movie starring an invisible-to-the-naked-eye pathogen as the antagonist, I'll give this one a hearty thumbs up. It's better than most, and it beats Outbreak hands down when it comes time to explaining where the virus came from. Nobody will ever be able to think of a stranger place to get a virus from. The only thing that stops me from calling these origins idiotic is the fact that it's absolutely plausible.
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