Fresh Reviews: "Contagion"

Rated PG-13 for strong language and "disturbing content" (they sure got that right).

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You run into it all the time: you're in a movie theatre, on a bus, at a mall, and you're surrounded by people coughing, sneezing, blowing their nose... and you never think twice about it. There have even been previous Hollywood movies about major disease outbreaks (remember Dustin Hoffman in "Outbreak", anybody?) that you could go see and walk away from merely entertained. They certainly wouldn't cause you to lose any sleep that night. After seeing Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion", you might very well lose sleep for the next couple of weeks, not to mention not want to shake anybody's hand and load up in a MAJOR way on hand sanitizer.

It all starts with a business trip to Hong Kong for Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow). She returns from the trip merely feeling jetlagged (she says), but within two days dies of a virulent plague that quickly spreads at a shocking rate. Her husband (Matt Damon) seems immune, and possibly his daughter, but everyone else seems fair game, as federal agents, CDC personell, and conspiracy-minded bloggers (Jude Law, allegedly offering a cure) go into action from Minneapolis to Macau in an attempt to stop the imminent end of the world as we know it.

This being Soderbergh, you know two things: (1) There will be subtle but clear messages woven into a movie that seems to be just a thriller on the surface. And you get them: commentary on both official government sources that continually fail to protect us from major disasters (Katrina and the Wall Street collapse are mentioned, 9/11 is also an obvious reference). And, (2) the cast will be as star-studded as it gets without at any point distracting from the urgency of the story itself. And again, true to form, we get Laurence Fisburne, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and those previously mentioned, plus folks like stand-up comic Demetri Martin (Soderbergh does have this habit of putting comics in straight roles) all doing incredible work. It's virtually impossible anywhere outside of Soderbergh to find a cast this full of big names that doesn't seem gimmicky, but everyone here is at the top of their game, and the way you totally buy them as ordinary people going through this horrendous experience makes the suspense all the more unbearable.

Of course, numerous moviegoers will probably fail to see the social commentary and just enjoy the film as a thriller. In that respect, does it succeed? I can hardly emphasize how INCREDIBLY much it does. Without every resorting to phony "documentary style" film making (there's never any doubt you're watching a movie), "Contagion" feels like actual coverage of real events, and you truly seem to be experiencing the near collapse of civilization in addition to the plague itself, as people become more and more savage and violent as the disease expands and expands. Soderbergh's regular composer, Cliff Martinez, contributes an ominous, brooding score that really ramps up the tension. If there has been any movie of the past five or six years that truly puts the viewer on the proverbial edge of their seat from first scene to last and never lets them relax or feel at ease, this is the one.

It does all of this while juggling multiple intertwined storylines taking place around the world, including Hong Kong, Washington D.C., Chicago, and allegedly Minneapolis, where Damon's character is supposed to live. (The Minneapolis scenes were actually filmed in Chicago.) I was somewhat amused by the character on a cell phone on a bus announcing he was right at the corner of Lake & Lyndale and about to get off (I live only about five blocks from the ACTUAL Lake & Lyndale, which looks nothing like that corner). This very effectively gives you a picture of how widespread this contagion really is and what kind of danger the world is facing. Just in case you weren't already feeling nervous enough.

I saw a brief piece in a local newspaper interviewing some CDC people about how realistic they thought the movie was on a scale of one to ten. They said that the plague outbreak itself was probably an 8 or even a 9, while the response to it was perhaps a five. I don't honestly think you can ask for much better than that from a commercial movie from a big Hollywood studio. And I also don't think you can ask for a much more intense, gripping suspense experience at the movies today. Add to that the social commentary (and yes, it IS a richer movie if you notice that too) and you have a movie that works better on a greater number of levels than anything I can think of in the multiplexes right now. I'm beginning to think that there is literally nothing that Steven Soderbergh cannot do.