Contagion Movie Reveiw

Director: Steven Soderbergh 

Cast & Crew: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle, Marion Cotillard

Rating: * * * *

Plot Summary: Contagion takes place in the worst case scenario of a deadly virus. An international traveler, Beth Emhoff, reaches into the snack bowl at an airport bar before passing her credit card to a waiter. A business meeting begins with a round of handshakes. A man coughs on a crowded bus. On returning to Minneapolis from Hong Kong, what she thought was jet lag takes a virulent turn. Two days later she is dead after a bout of epilepsy and the doctors have no reason for the cause of death. The epidemic grows, while the worldwide medical community races to find a cure…

Review: When one would watch the promos of this movie, it would definitely come across as intriguing, although its a well-made movie with a huge star cast, it still may not appeal to the masses as much. It is an ‘in-the-face’ representation of a world epidemic viral disease that kills within few hours of the first felt symptoms and how the masses would respond(and are responding) to the situation at hand. It appears to be a medical documentary at many points especially with all the doctors using the jargons(of course we understand that the actors are in the skin of the character) that makes it an even more heavy duty lesser known film genre, a medical thriller.

The movie opens with Day 2 showing Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) on the phone with her clandestine lover sitting at the airport waiting for her flight announcement on her way back home to Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is seen complaining of fatigue and common cold but passes it off as jet lag, within 24 hours she has a bout of epilepsy while her husband, Mitch Emhoff ( Matt Damon) rushes her to the ER where the doctors declare her brought dead due to an unknown reason. Their son follows suit and is dead by the time Matt gets home to him. Paltrow is declared Patient Zero of an unheard of virus outbreak while the Center for Disease Control headed by Dr. Ellis Cheever(Laurence Fishburne), his deputy Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) and The World Health Organization get to work to find out the reason for the outbreak and the prevention method while the lab doctors work on making a vaccine for combatting the virus. In the autopsy scene of Patient Zero Paltrow, (which as a matter of fact was the most disgusting scene) a cranial saw rips her skull open for the doctors to analyze the damage the virus caused and in an attempt to make a vaccine.