Contagion
Review by Anthony Morris
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Contagion
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There are two ways to tell a story about a deadly virus.
One
involves a lot of scientists and doctors racing around desperately
trying to find a last minute cure while the body-count threatens to
soar and the containment measures threaten to collapse.
The
other is what you get with Steven Soderberg’s latest film Contagion : a
breathlessly-paced but near-clinical look at the diseases’ spread and
the global medical community’s hurried but still painfully slow (that
is to say, realistic) attempts to find a vaccine.
While the
cast of characters ranges from man-on-the-street to the media to the
medical experts working to find a cure, they're all merely pieces of a
much bigger puzzle – with the possible exception of Beth (Gwyneth
Paltrow), who comes home from Hong Kong with a brand-new virus that
quickly leaves her dead on the floor to the horror of her husband (Matt
Damon).
And yes, if you've ever wanted to see Paltrow undergo an autopsy, then this is the film for you.
It's
not exactly an all-star cast but there are enough big names here (Jude
Law as a fear-mongering blogger, Lawrence Fishburne as the head of
America's Centre for Disease Control, Kate Winslet as an on-the-ground
doctor) to give this dry, methodical, rapid-fire thriller the cast list
of an old-fashioned disaster epic, and reading between the lines here
there's a good chance that in someone else's hands that’s what this
would have become.
But Soderberg’s cool, restrained approach
to the material lowers the temperature of the occasionally melodramatic
script – did almost every break-through in attacking the virus have to
come from doctors breaking the rules? – and turns what could have been
a shrill, easily dismissible shocker into something ruthless and
remorseless that'll stay with you a lot longer.
And here's a tip: bring some hand sanitiser for afterwards, you’ll be needing it. 3.5 out
of 5
Contagion
Australian release: 20th October,
2011
Official
Site: Contagion
Cast: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Kate Winslet
Director: Steven Soderbergh
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