Contagion Film Review

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh.

Starring: Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne , Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Ehle and Anna Jacoby-Heron.

Length: 106mins.

Reviewed by: Vincent Harte.

Just as the weather has started to take a much colder turn for the worse, Contagion hits our cinema screens and is sure to have everyone who sees it nearly convinced that every case of the sniffles is a potentially fatal epidemic waiting to happen.

Using a large ensemble cast Contagion tells the story of a worldwide outbreak of a fatal disease which threatens to wipe out a large percentage of the world’s population, it does this by not only following various organisations attempts to find an effective cure but also the general public whose lives are turned upside down and indeed are in danger of being extinguished.

The film begins with Beth Emhoff played by Gwyneth Paltrow, an employee of a large multi-national conglomerate who is returning home to Minneapolis from a business trip in Japan, after stopping briefly in Chicago to have a rendezvous with an old boyfriend she reunites with her husband Mitch (Damon) and step-daughter Jory played by newcomer Anna Jacoby-Heron. Their reunion is short lived however as Beth quickly begins to develop a mystery sickness and dies soon thereafter.

During Beth’s autopsy it becomes frighteningly apparent that something is seriously wrong, the narrative then switches to three World Health Organisation doctors, Dr. Ellis Cheever (Fishburne) head of the disease research department, Dr. Leonora Orantes (Cotillard, Inception, La Vie en Rose) an expert on disease pathology and Dr. Erin Mears (Winslet) the newest member of the team. They each begin to fight the disease in their own way; Cheever is tasked with alerting a world who after SARS and Bird Flu scares which came to nothing wishes not to be inconvenienced, Orantes is sent to Japan to trace the origins of the new disease while Mears is sent to Minneapolis in an attempt to curtail the diseases spread in the continental US.

Contagion does a lot of things well; it explains quite complex concepts such as the way a disease evolves and is transferred from person to person to the need to be able to artificially recreate a virus in a lab before a cure can be found simply but never patronisingly so. As well as this, Contagion’s take on how it deals with its premise on both a personal and a global scale is refreshing and enjoyable as this could have easily been turned into a Michael Bay-esque disaster movie.

Unfortunately what it does well also hinders it in some way or another, its ambitious no main protagonist style sometimes leads to far too many story threads to follow. Marion Cotillard in particular is criminally underused and even though all parts are well casted and acted you will sometimes find yourself wishing for more of one character and less of another. Contagion also attempts to make a good deal of social commentary, from Jude Laws portrayal of a disgraced doctor trying to boost his blog hits and his bank balance with false promises of a cure, to widespread rioting when it becomes apparent that no vaccination is forthcoming. These plot points are great ideas, so much so in fact that they may have justified an entire movie on their own merit, instead here they feel like afterthought and are never truly developed to a satisfactory level.

Verdict.

Contagion is a very enjoyable movie, it has heart in that you truly feel for the characters plight whether it be the loss of a loved one or the intense pressure they now find themselves under. As well as this, as mentioned above it is very well acted with solid performances throughout and quite a few heart wrenching scenes. In the end the only major criticism is that it attempts too much, which in a time of bland remakes and endless sequels it should also be somewhat commended for.

7/10