Contagion

Rating: 2/5

The best piece of apocalyptic fiction out there is Max Brooks' novel World War Z. The book details the human-zombie conflict, from the beginning and the great panic to the systematic defeat of the undead. It is a truly brilliant piece of literature and is important considering the state of the modern world. I bring up World War Z because whoever wrote Contagion definitely read it. Too bad Contagion isn't half as good.

Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns from a business trip to China sick. Her illness is undiagnosable and ends up killing Beth and her son. The mysterious disease quickly spreads all over the world, transmitted by touch and causing death extremely quickly. People all over the world, including Beth's husband Mitch (Matt Damon), CDC operatives (Lawrence Fishburne and Kate Winslet), a WHO epidemiologist (Marion Cotillard), and a conspiracy theorist (Jude Law) scramble to achieve their goals, whether it be a vaccine, survival, or profit.

Contagion's number one problem is that there are way too many characters. Too many characters all played by great actors who all could hold a basic epidemic plot by themselves. Not enough time is given to develop anyone, and the film wil go for 45 minutes without showing certain people, leaving most subplots unresolved. All of this is compounded by the fact that nothing really happens. Steven Soderbergh puts a lot of effort into setting up everything and putting the characters into tense and complex situations, and then it just kind of ends. There's a kind of happy ending, and the movie just stops.

Speaking of the plot (or lack thereof), it has no point. It jumps all over the place and several of the more popular characters like Jude Law and Marion Cotillard don't have anything to do with anything. these two don't accomplish anything in the grand scheme of things and are completely inconsequential. Also, the whole thing just feels small. Rules about who dies and how fast change several times over the course of the narrative, and because the movie is so focused on good-looking celebrities reacting to things, we don't see the scope of the tragedy.

I was looking forward to Contagion. Maybe my hopes were too high, but Soderbergh can and has done much better. It could have been so much better, but Contagion spreads itself too thin and collapses. Now that I think about it, the messages of "wash your damn hands" and "people over profit" don't matter because Contagion fails to infect. Zing!