Contagion: Find a Vaccine

Contagion boasts a cast list as long as the list of people from high school I hope to never see again. While watching it, I kept saying, “Is that…?” Everyone from Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne (whose porn star daughter just turned 20), Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, and Elliot Gould all the way down to Demetri Martin has some sort of role. Also in the mix are three-time Emmy winner Bryan Cranston and John Hawkes (who has seen his star power increase since the end of Deadwood). Steven Soderbergh, who is no stranger to super-talented ensemble casts, directs a script by Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum, The Informant).

So, what happens when you combine four Oscar winning actors, four Oscar-nominees, and an Emmy winning actor with an Oscar winning director? You get a 105 minute movie that runs out of steam with about 20 minutes left. But, if the whole purpose of the film was to make you feel uncomfortable and give you the heebies-geebies, then it was a raging success. During the screening, people would cough, and the audience would turn and look in that direction. I haven’t felt that uncomfortable since I listened to the Stuff You Should Know podcast on Scabies.

The plot is very reminiscent of 1995’s Outbreak. Contagion starts on Day 2 of an epidemic with unknown origins, which is later dubbed MEV-1. Beth (Paltrow) returns home to Minneapolis from a business trip to Hong Kong. As the trailer shows, she promptly dies, leaving her husband Mitch (Damon) wanting answers. A man in Hong Kong drops dead on a bus. His demise is captured on a video phone, and internet blogger Alan (Law) picks it up and runs with it.  He becomes a major anti-government character. In response to the disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention forms a team headed by Dr. Cheaver (Fishburne) to try and contain it on the home front. Cheaver hires Dr. Mears (Winslet) to investigate the Minneapolis death. On the global front, the World Health Organization sends Dr. Orantes (Cotillard) to Hong Kong to search for the origins of the disease.

In the meantime, society starts to panic and breakdown. This was one of my more favorite aspects of the film. It shows riots at pharmacies, grocery stores, banks, and the like. My first thought was, find one of the Extreme Couponers, and raid their “stockpile” of goods. Why did no one think of this? These freaks have hundreds of rolls of toilet paper, bottles of laundry detergent, sticks of deodorant and tons of pet food and sports drinks. This storyline got The Wife, who is already paranoid about the breakdown of society, thinking about what we need to put in our emergency kit that we are going to have in our basement. 

As the search for a cure continues, accusations of government conspiracies fly, reports of the spreading get worse, and the death toll rises both in the “world” and the cast. When it’s mentioned that St. Louis (which was probably in reference to St. Louis, MN, not MO) was infected, the audience clapped and smiled. They were proud to be mentioned in a movie about a spreading disease? I would have been proud if we were a safe haven, but that’s just me. Nothing seems to be able to stop this insane disease that can kill by touch or by breath.

As I mentioned above, Contagion flat ran out of gas. Outbreak is not a great film by any means, but it is superior to this. Then again, Contagion does make you feel uncomfortable and not wanting to shake anyone’s hand. Part of that ambience comes from the decent score by Cliff Martinez (Traffic). As you can see, many of the people involved in this film have worked together before, some more than once. It all seems to revolve around Matt Damon. Wilfred would be pleased. We were only Cate Blanchett short of a Talented Mr. Ripley reunion.

In the end, Contagion is by far not the highlight of anyone’s career, with the exception of possibly Demetri Martin, although he may have actually been better as crippled Carlos from Take Me Home Tonight. If you are going to the theater, I would recommend Warrior over Contagion any day.

RATING: 5/10