Contagion (2011) – 4/5
Solid, realistic film with a rather large cast of recognizable, mostly award-winning actors that all deliver decent performances given the relatively mediocre nature of the dialogue. It’s just a decent film; nothing remarkable or noteworthy. No performances really stood out, either for good or bad, and nothing about it was particularly memorable save a few moments of tension here and there. Matt Damon was good, I guess, but only because he was given the most screen time, I think.
The movie seems to waste its cast, if anything. I don’t think it’s really necessary to have so many big A-list actors in roles that could have easily gone to just about anybody else. That was actually one of biggest issues I had with this movie: too many characters. It gets overwhelming at times, and since the film chooses to only focus on each one for about 5 minutes at a time, if that, it’s hard to care about any of them really.
I also really didn’t much care for Jude Law in this; he’s miscast, and the **SPOILERS** ignorant yet influential personality the film tries to pass him off as being didn’t work. He’s too whiny and pathetic, and didn’t seem all that intelligent, which may have been the point, but allowing him to “win” a debate with acclaimed scientist Laurence Fishburne on national television was absurd. How did he get that incriminating information on Fishburne, anyway? He read it on Facebook? How the hell did it get there? What? **END SPOILERS** I couldn’t tell if it was bad casting or bad writing or both, but it just didn’t work. The character was a good idea, though, as someone like that would undoubtedly emerge given an epidemic of this magnitude. Heck, it’s already happening now with the whole “vaccines cause autism” nonsense. But I digress.
Overall, it’s an enjoyable film. It’s a little stupid at times, and the dialogue is clunky, and the characters aren’t all that memorable, but the film is solid and doesn’t always wrap everything up in a neat little bow, which I enjoyed. In fact, most plot lines in this are kind of left hanging. I think Steven Soderbergh, the director, was trying to make this the “Traffic” of virus epidemic movies, and he would have succeeded had the script been more cohesive. Maybe if it focused on only 3 or 4 characters instead of 10 or whatever. And if the dialogue was a little better. Still, it’s enjoyable enough. Worth a watch.
