Review: Contagion is Sick With its Own Ideas.
- Jan 19, 2017
- 2 min read
Viral infections are nothing new to the world of cinema. Outbreak, Carriers, The Andromeda Strain, they all share the same elements. Contagion tries to be different and in doing so, ends up the same as all the rest.
Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) is unknowingly infected by the world's next pandemic. She takes a flight from Asia to the USA and is dead within 24 hours. Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon), her husband, soon loses his step-son to the same virus and must try his best to hold his life together. Meanwhile, Dr Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne), Dr Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) and Dr Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) are trying to find a cure, along with the source of the outbreak. And that’s just scratching the surface. There’s also Jude Law’s conspiracy blogger, Elliot Gould playing yet another doctor, and so many more players, that the movie can’t handle it.
It’s a good concept. Follow the lives of various individuals that are affected by a global pandemic. But there’s a limit to the amount of content that you can fit into a 2 hour movie. Contagion is bursting at the seams with many characters disappearing or being killed off to make room for new ones. Matt Damon is the only one of note due to his sympathetic circumstances but everyone else has so little development that it’s easy to forget what their purpose is.
The acting is good, as it should be from the main cast, but we’re only given it in short bursts. Each story is interesting and has it’s moments but would be far better served with a film of its own. Some characters don’t even have a bearing on the course of the film and could have been cut entirely with the movie losing nothing at all.
Contagion is a whole lot of potential and, unfortunately, nothing more. It’s packed with good ideas but, like anything else, too much of a good thing can become a bad thing. While I wouldn’t recommend you seek it out, if it happens to be on, there are worse ways to spend your time.
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