It starts with a cough. Before we see red-nosed and bleary-eyed Beth (Gweyneth Paltrow), ailing but attributing it to jet-lag, we hear a cough – and it all begins that simply.
Refracting Outbreak and The Andromeda Strain through the unembellished style of director Steven Soderbergh’s own Traffic – which similarly traced multiple, intercontinental storylines to their high-stakes conclusions – Contagion follows a mysterious epidemic from Hong Kong to London, Atlanta, and around the world.
Contagion 
Directed by Steven Soderbergh. |
At the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) sends Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) on an investigative mission to Minneapolis, where Beth’s husband, Mitch (Matt Damon) tries to keep his children safe from the virus wracking his wife and a quickly increasing percentage of the general population.
Racing against the clock, World Health Organization epidemiologist Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) travels to Hong Kong in an attempt to track the source of the virus, while Professor Ian Sussman (Elliott Gould) and others hasten to create a vaccine.
Meanwhile, conspiracy-theory-obsessed blogger Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) posts video blogs to his website, Truth Serum Now, purporting to demonstrate that he cured himself of the disease with a homeopathic remedy derived from forsythia, which health authorities are quick to denounce.
Given an insistently contemporary edge by the all-too-real records of SARS and avian flu, Contagion is a chilling story of humanity staring extinction in the face.
Operating as a horror movie devoid of that genre’s ubiquitous conventions – though you aren’t likely to find another disease this brutally infectious outside of a zombie flick – Contagion confronts viewers with a plausible scenario that ought to do for the (unwashed) handshake what Jaws did for the midnight swim.
Crystallizing some Soderbergh trademarks, this thriller eschews the glaze of slickness so common in big-budget movies – only the soundtrack by longtime collaborator Cliff Martinez ever feels glib – and serves up a cast of A-listers Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns are not afraid to kill off.
In what has become a collaborative tradition – Contagion marking his sixth feature under director Soderbergh, with Liberace lined up for seventh place – Matt Damon refreshingly hangs up his hotshot hat, this time in order to take on unglamorous paternal duties in a time of crisis.
Bryan Cranston similarly plays against type as a well-meaning rear admiral instead of his usual harried, neurotic father figure. Laurence Fishburne finally puts his post-Matrix rut behind him with a strong turn as a government figure for whom duty to his country does not necessarily align with familial obligations.
Jude Law, too, gives his best performance in years as the skeptical, anti-authoritarian blogger whose motives – and integrity – are questionable. Paltrow and Kate Winslet are as reliable as ever, respectively playing the unwitting patient zero and an altruistic doctor.
Despite a wealth of scientific information – which would have made for a whole lot of tedious exposition in the wrong hands – Contagion leaves us in the dark about some of the minutiae (though without any intentionally glaring omissions like the ambiguous apocalypse of The Road), but even curiosity about the details will not render it unsatisfying.