Contagion Review

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Jaskee_Hickman]Jaskee Hickman
Warner Bros. Pictures: Contagion
When speaking about movies with plagues and viruses, I think about zombies chasing people down and eating their brains. "Contagion" is obviously nothing like that. This is closer to something like "Outbreak". This was a movie that I was interested in seeing. It features a pretty good cast of credible actors and looked good on the trailers, even though that doesn't mean anything.
"Contagion" follows a group of people through a virus outbreak that threatens mankind and could kill millions. The virus is unknown and anyone who carries it will die within a few days of being infected. Doctors from the world over attempt to find a cure for the lethal disease as people lose control and become more and more desperate.
The movie was alright, but it was nothing spectacular. Although this does contain some drama, it wasn't as dramatic as I would've expected. It was very subdued and didn't get to where I thought it might go. These types of movies are supposed to show us the fear and widespread panic that's going on. It shows a little violence and even less of the fear that would be going around if this actually happened. The lack of drama and fear takes away from a movie that had the space to improve by a good margin. It could have been smarter and delved deeper into what was going on across the multiple storylines. Instead, it focused on a few people and never showed their feelings during most of the events that take place.
"Contagion" never felt like a true disaster movie. The film tells you about the many people that are dying and the amount of people who could die. With the exception of some of the main characters dying off, it doesn't really show any of it. You hear about it from the news broadcast in the background or one of the characters telling another about something, but that's about it. It never allows you to get involved with the characters or the situations they were faced with. It felt like the movie was just a bunch of clips that were put together soap opera style and that hurt the film's continuity. Because of these things that I mentioned, it just felt incomplete and even the ending kind of pops up out of nowhere.
The acting overall was good, with Jude Law and Kate Winslet maybe having the best performances. The acting was easily the strong point of "Contagion", even though the focus shifted continuously from person to person and didn't let you get engaged with them or the stories too much. I also have to wonder why Marion Cotillard's name gets top billing when she's barely in the movie and doesn't do very much when she's on-screen. Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jennifer Ehle, and Jude Law had more face time with far more important roles than she did. It might not mean much, but I just found that odd.
The movie was okay. I just wish it had more structure and character development. It also would've been much better had they shown the destruction that was being caused by this situation. It would have been nice for Steven Soderbergh to really explore a lot of the events that were supposed to be happening in that world, but that didn't happen. Although solid, it lacked depth, tension, structure, and seemingly most of the disaster. I don't know how that happened, but it did.
Score: 6/10
Rating: PG-13
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast:
Matt Damon
Laurence Fishburne
Kate Winslet
Jude Law
Jennifer Ehle
Marion Cotillard
Gwyneth Paltrow
Film Length: 106 minutes
Release Date: September 9, 2011
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
Jaskee Hickman http://www.themoviepictureshow.com/
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