Movie of the Week: Contagion

This week presents several movie of the week options.  One option is Warrior – the Rocky (or possibly jumping right to the Rocky V) of MMA films, whose preview bears the hallmark of a bad movie – 98% of the plot is given away in the preview (all I know is that the two main characters enter a competition and the two of them face off in the finals of that competition – but who wins, besides MMA, which gets a free advertisement for its product, I do not know).  Another option is Bucky Larson, which stars Nick Swardson and is produced by Happy Madison, the production studio of Adam Sandler, that specializes in brain cell-destroying excrement.  However, I am confident that Bucky Larson, which appears to track the adventures of a buck-toothed, borderline special needs young man who inexplicably becomes a small-membered adult film star, will definitely “buck” the Sandler trend and be a classic.

So I settled on Steven Soderbergh’s new film Contagion.  I had a free ticket thanks to the New York Times’ Film Club.  Part of the membership is that I get tickets to several early screenings of films.  But, as you may guess, any film club based on membership in a print-media based organization with liberal leanings means that it is usually me and a few hundred elderly Jewish people.  In other words when I want to hang out with elderly Catholics I go to Church and then when I need to get some elderly Jewish company I go to NYT film club screenings.

The movie is about a fictional world-wide outbreak of a bat/swine based virus that kills quickly and with minimal contact.  The movie boasts an all star cast, with Lawrence Fishburne and Matt Damon earning the most screen time.   Jude Law is the standout to me as the conspiracy theorist blogging superstar in the movie, but everyone is good.

The movie makes the undoubtedly true point that within a few weeks of an outbreak like the one depicted in the film, humans would revert to becoming animals whose survival instinct trumps all sense of decency.  Unless you are a named star above the title of the film, in which case you will still have your humanity.

The movie is well made and moves briskly, but I still never felt like any of the main characters were in danger and if you want an audience to care about the main characters they need to seem as vulnerable as the cast of extras that are filling up the mass graves.  I haven’t seen it in a while, but I still think I’d take Outbreak over Contagion.

Final Grade – B/B-