Contagion (3/5 Stars)

Setting a record for the number of Oscar Winners killed in throwaway cameos.

The potential of a worldwide epidemic has been a great time-waster/audience scarer in the news for the past couple years. The virus will come from China (SARS, Birdflu) and just might be comparable to the 1917 influenza epidemic that killed about 1% of the world’s population. That was 1917, so the number of dead was only in the millions. Still, what if a virus like that came along again. Hundreds of millions might die.

“Contagion,” tells the story of such a virus in an oddly responsible way. There are no gruesome death scenes, over-dramatic wailing, or contagious zombies roaming the earth. Instead we are treated to plenty of scientists and doctors saying scientific things with patience and composure. These scientists are played by such acting heavyweights like Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslett, and Marion Cotillard. The first victim of the virus is Gwyneth Paltrow. Matt Damon plays her grieving husband. There are several other small parts played by well known actors. Jude Law plays a sensationalist blogger intent on dispensing government conspiracies. John Hawkes plays a janitor in Laurence Fishburne’s office. Jennifer Ehle and Demetri Martin are two other scientists working on the vaccine. Finally there is Bryan Cranston who plays some sort of military officer. Obviously, this is a very impressive cast. There are four Oscar winners, two Oscar nominees, and a two time Emmy winner in it. But none of this really matters except in marketing. You can put all the famous great actors on a screen and it still does not guarantee a great movie. This is especially true if the story is trying to be realistic.  

What’s the point of a Great Actor if the story does not allow for Great Acting? The Oscar winners here are supposed to be playing normal people going about exactly what they would do in this situation. This calls for understated performances, which they all do quite well. But really, it probably would have made more sense if the movie didn’t have any big name stars at all. Celebrity has a way of overshadowing underdeveloped characters. I rarely felt I was observing actual people. More often I was like, well, look that’s Kate Winslett and now she is in Chicago. Furthermore, if the movie wanted to take a realistic take on a subject that involves the entire world and a hyperlink network of characters, then perhaps the movie would have been better if it weren’t a movie. Two hours is not long enough to tell this story the way they want to tell it.  It should have been a 10-hour HBO mini-series.

The fact that the movie has such a huge scope but is only two hours long gives the story a sense of being in fast-forward most of the time. The vaccine apparently takes several months to create and distribute in the movie, but has a screen time of about 15 minutes. The great heroine of the story, Jennifer Ehle, is barely in the movie at all. Character back-story and motivation is hinted at but never developed in a satisfying way. Most of the problems set out are solved off-screen or dissipate in large jumps in time. Weirdly enough, the most dramatic conflict in the storyline is not the virus at all. It deals with the sensationalist blogger played by Jude Law who I think was selling a fake cure online. He gets arrested at the end, or maybe not. I’m not sure what was going on there in that park or even who he was talking to. It all happened so fast.

We’ve all seen catastrophe movies before. Well, remember that scene where the people are running wild in the streets and the looters raid the supermarket. That scene is in this movie too. Now, I’m sure that such a situation can be told in a realistic way that is just as exciting and dramatic as these scenes are in the best of zombie movies. But when a movie does not add anything to the set up the scene will not escape cliche. Time and details are needed for a realistic movies to be exciting. Otherwise they lack credibility. Now they obviously were pressed for time in this case, but whittling away those details makes what is left rather humdrum. Without the credibility the scene actually comes off worse than the same scene would be in a not so serious movie. You take the supermarket scene in a movie like “Zombieland.” Not only do they raid the supermarket, but they also kill zombies. Here they just raid the supermarket. It's boring.  

Having said all this, the movie is well put together considering that it is telling a story about a worldwide catastrophe in such a short running time. The director is none other than Steven Soderbergh, who was the Oscar winning director of one of the best hyperlink movies ever made, Traffic. But, really, you can just sense all the talent in the direction and the cast here going to waste. One wonders why Soderbergh decided to make this movie at all. The man is capable of great things. Why is he wasting his time with mediocre projects? Actually you can say this about Soderbergh’s career in general. Did we really need an Ocean’s 13? Come on Steven, you’re better than this.