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Just saw this movie, Contagion, from 2011. I tend to like apocalyptic type movies, so I'm not sure how this one got past me last year or when the DVD first came out.
I have mixed reviews; please share yours as well.
Cast: Lots of big stars like Matt Damon, Lawrence Fishburne, Gwenyth Paltrow, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Elliot Gould. Lots of recognizeable but not as famous stars like Enrico Colatoni (from Just Shoot Me), John Hawkes ("Sol Starr" in Deadwood), and Jennifer Ehle, who I LOVED in Pride & Prejudice (the good one, not the more recent one).
Story: No actual spoilers here, but it's basically: New killer disease appears and spreads around the world, while some work on fighing it and some work on surviving. I (oddly, I know) love movies and books where a large percentage of the human population dies, and people have to find food, protect their homes and loved ones, while others riot and loot, and the government is powerless. I haven't yet read up on viruses and how they spread (I tend to geekily launch into research after every movie I see, to check out the facts or history behind elements of the story), but it seemd pretty realistic with how the virus started, mutated, and spread.
Annoyances: The movie seems like it was meant to be a longer miniseries, and then it got chopped down to a feature length film. It seems heavily edited and choppy. In my opinion, there could have been a whole movie about the people at the CDC racing to fight the disease, or about the one family who was first affected and then had to figure out how to survive while grieving. But you have to jump around and follow a whole bunch of storylines, which to me is easier to do in a miniseries when more times is given to each. I had to watch the movie twice to figure out who "John Neal" was and that he was the same guy being taken into an ambulance with a crying wife at his side.
Another annoyance was the musical "interludes" that interrupted the movie a few times. It was kind of a musical "montage" from a Beatles movie or a Monkees episode. You know, those music-montage-things where they show a quick succession of a bunch of scenes, people scrabbling around and working on things with no dialogue, and music playing over it all? Annoying.
Another annoyance: This is something I hate about all disease movies. The mortality rate of this disease is about 25%. That's huge in real-life terms, but in reality, it means that most people who get it live and recover. As comparison, the bubonic plague and pneumonic plague, treatable today, back in their day had 30-90% mortality rates. Ebola has a 65% mortality rate. The movie showed no one who got sick with this new disease and lived. One character even pointed out "Hey 75% of the people who get this will survive," but it was kind of ignored by the writer and director. Instead we just kept hearing that millions had died and mass graves were being dug all over the US and other countries.
Little "messages" I agreed with: With most movies, there are overall themes or little embedded messages, usually revealing the opinions and biases of the writers, directors, and producers, and this one is no exception. Other disease movies like And the Band Played On, and Outbreak had lots of political messages embeded and not-so-embedded in them. But oddly for me, this movie's subliminal messages tended to be things I agreed with:
--Government is too big and bureaucratic to solve any problem, and regulations and bureaucracy usually makes things worse. The two people who made the biggest breakthroughs in fighting this disease had to break government rules and directives in order to do so.
--People who work in restaurant kitchens don't wash their hands reliably, and thereby spread diseases.
--Reputable pharma companies that make life saving drugs and vaccines will always be vilified by some for any profit they make to keep themselves in business, while...
--Scam artists who claim to be for the people will try to exploit any emergency to make a buck.
--People really need to stock up on food and other supplies in their homes. I'm always disturbed by people in movies who, after some disaster, have to go to the grocery store and find it empty, looted, and people are killing each other for the last can of food. They have nothing in their nice comfortable middle-class home after a few days but a box of crackers. Idiots. I have so much stuff stored up, I could have locked myself in the house for a year while the disease got sorted out. In these movies, and unfortunately in real disasters, people are surprised by shortages, looting, power outages, civil unrest, military intervention, quarantines, and roadblocks. Be prepared.
--In an apocalyptic scenario, even anti-gun folks like Matt Damon will find guns useful to protect themselves and their families.
--Wash your hands. A lot. You never know who touched that thing you just touched. You never know where that hand you just shook has been. And stop touching your face so much with those hands. Apparently people touch their faces an average of 2-3 times per minute. Since seeing this movie, I've paid attention to that (it makes staff meetings more interesting) and it seems to be accurate.
So all in all, no wonderful acting, no super-intelligent storyline, some annoyances, but a mostly enjoyable movie that has some good little lessons embedded in it. And I was happy to see Enrico Colatoni, Jennifer Ehle, and John Hawkes again.
Last edited by Tracysherm; 08-09-2012 at 01:46 PM..
It was okay, just a flow of events, nicely depicted by superstars, no build-up of tension leading to a suspenseful ending like we are used to in Hollywood movies. That is why this is simultaneously a "good" movie but at the same time boring in many ways. To me it was like watching a flow of real life events, and the truth is, reality sucks, especially if you have to go to a theater and dish out $10 to see it ! Only thing that made it worth it for me is the fact that it was of "apocalyptic" nature (i.e, nothing can save us, end of the world etc.!) and I am a sucker for apocalyptic movies .
It was like watching paint dry, Just LESS fun. I saw it in IMAX and it was awful having the character's faces up close to where it was overwhelming. Esp Jude Law's teeth. Yikes! Sorry Jude.
Another annoyance: This is something I hate about all disease movies. The mortality rate of this disease is about 25%. That's huge in real-life terms, but in reality, it means that most people who get it live and recover. As comparison, the bubonic plague and pneumonic plague, treatable today, back in their day had 30-90% mortality rates. Ebola has a 65% mortality rate. The movie showed no one who got sick with this new disease and lived. One character even pointed out "Hey 75% of the people who get this will survive," but it was kind of ignored by the writer and director. Instead we just kept hearing that millions had died and mass graves were being dug all over the US and other countries.
Millions would have died, in the scenario depicted in the film. If you will recall, the virus in the film had an unusually high transmision rate. Further, it was specified that the resulting global infection rate of the epidemic would be 1 in 8; that's 12.5%.
3% of the United States population is over nine million. Nine million dead in a few months? (compare that to an average of a little over 2 million deaths annually in the United States) Yeah, that's gonna require some mass graves, especially when coupled with the breakdown caused by the ensuing societal disruption of the various services required to process bodies.
3% of the global population is 210 million people. I think that accounts for "millions and millions".
As for Ebola, it is not easily transmitted and so it makes for a bad comparison (unlike the contagion in the film, Ebola cannot be transmitted via aerosol). While very deadly, it cannot spread near as easily as the fictional contagion.
i remember seeing a great TV movie with Kate Jackson and Howard Hessemen back in 1992 it was called Silent Killer/Black Death or something like that, it was more suspenseful than Contagion
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! Only thing that made it worth it for me is the fact that it was of "apocalyptic" nature (i.e, nothing can save us, end of the world etc.!) and I am a sucker for apocalyptic movies 
.
I saw it.
