Contagion

Contagion (2011)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/

Steven Soderbergh's ends 2011 with Contagion, a thriller about a deadly disease spreading throughout the world like a wildfire, and the team of doctors trying to stop it. Mitch (Matt Damon) is at the center of the chaos, for it was his wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) who first contracted and ultimately spread the disease while on a trip to China. Dr. Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) heads up the CDC and is in charge of finding a vaccination/cure for the disease, aided by Dr. Mears (Kate Winslet), and...well, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Bryan Cranston, Elliot Gould and a whole slew of others all make appearances in the film, and who knows what they really do.





As you can see, this movie has a monster cast, and I think, to its detriment.  There are just too damn many people in this movie - I couldn't tell who was working where or for who, who was immune to the disease and who just didn't get it yet. There were wives and fathers of characters floating around with no real purpose of being there...it was a mess. Matt Damon's character started off the film, his wife being the first death on Day 1, but after that, the only reason he was there was to be the human face of the sickness. It cut back to Damon whenever we wanted to feel sad about what was happening, then on with the doctoring and campaigning again. Soderbergh tried to keep it moving, which I appreciate, but some parts felt rushed while others dragged; it needed more balance and more focus. I'm not sure why Jude Law's character was in the movie either, except to help promote chaos in an already chaotic time. I like a lot of Soderbergh's work, minus the two superfluous "Ocean's" sequels, but this time, he didn't seem to know where he was going with it.

Onto the megacast! So many parts, so little time.  At 106 minutes, there's just not enough screen time to do a story on every big name actor in this film. And that's okay, I just expected more out of the names they got. Gwyneth Paltrow, Elliot Gould (with whom I think Soderbergh is just buddies) and Bryan Cranston had maybe 10 minutes screen time each, Marion Cotillard about the same.  Kate Winslet started off strong, but then she got sick and kind of faded away. The big players here were Matt Damon, Larry Fishburne, and Jennifer Ehle, the latter of whom I've never heard. I won't talk about each's performance, but as an ensemble, this group did a pretty nice job with the time constraints. Again, the biggest problem is that with so many different faces on screen, it was hard to follow and hard to care. It seems like everything about this movie was chaos.

I didn't much care for Contagion. It wasn't a bad movie, per se, just not a very good one. Suffering from bloat and a lack of focus, I found myself wandering in and out of attention, and I almost welcomed the phone call I got in the middle of it. However, it was interesting to see how the chaos took shape, and to catch a glimpse into what we might face one day in a similar situation.  Here's hoping it never comes to that, and here's hoping Soderbergh regains old form with his next one.

Score: 5.5/10
Recommended: If you have time to kill