Review: Contagion
Steven Soderbergh's latest film, Contagion, opens on "Day 2" as traveling businesswoman Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) soon falls victim to a virus that is hitting a few others worldwide. A Japanese businessman faints on a bus, a twenty-something man in Hong Kong walks around in delirium and a model in London feels unwell at a photoshoot. Beth is married to Mitch (Matt Damon), who is immune to the virus, but whose teen daughter may not be. Theirs is just one of the many stories in this frenetic film.
While World Health Organization doctor (Marion Cotillard) finds trouble during her Hong Kong research, CDC doctor Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) heads to Minneapolis to investigate the source of this MEV-1 virus, and her boss, CDC Head Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne), deals with higher-ups (Bryan Cranston) and a long distance fiancee (Sanaa Lathan). And also! Jude Law plays a paranoid blogger (his blog has 12 million unique visitors, y'all), and Jennifer Ehle (best known for her Elizabeth in BBC's Pride and Prejudice miniseries) and twee hipster comedian Demetri Martin play CDC labworkers.
No one is going to contest the pedigree of the cast in Contagion (but Demetri Martin, really?!). However, such a large number of actors makes it a challenge to get too invested in any of their stories -- especially since there's a good chance any of the characters might catch the virus. That there are so many well-known actors involved in this project tends to work against this thriller at times. As soon as someone recognizable walks onscreen (often!), it can take the viewer out of the film. I wrote in my notes, "Dmitri Martin?" (twice, in fact), so surprised was I to see the man with the bowl cut in this film. Even Elliot Gould cameos as a scientist and former Austinite John Hawkes plays a CDC office janitor.
Soderbergh's touch is obvious in Contagion, given the shot composition, the lighting and color, and the pulsating music throughout (by Cliff Martinez, who has worked on at least two other Soderbergh films). This film's setup is reminiscent of Traffic, but Contagion has much less violence. The screenplay is snappy, but not as witty as Out of Sight.
I'm not sure if it's the director or screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, but someone on the Contagion crew doesn't think highly of bloggers. Elliot Gould's character goes so far as to refer to blogging as "graffiti with punctuation marks." As a writer for a film blog, I felt like I'd been zinged. Jude Law's blogger with faulty logic is the bad guy here ... well, if there's a bad guy other than the dastardly virus.
If the film's goal is to make the audience hyper-aware of how many times we touch our face (Winslet's character notes that a person does this thousands of times a day, what?) or to make one wary of holding the public handrail upon leaving the theatre, then mission accomplished! Otherwise, Contagion is a well-crafted yet likely forgettable movie that leaves the viewer feeling shorted.