Directed by Steven Soderbergh Starring Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne In Contagion, Steven Soderbergh applies his intelligent, steely touch to the medical disaster movie. A multi-stranded ensemble piece – imagine Traffic with microbes – Contagion traces the outbreak of a glo...
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Starring Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne
In Contagion, Steven Soderbergh applies his intelligent, steely touch to the medical disaster movie.
A multi-stranded ensemble piece – imagine Traffic with microbes – Contagion traces the outbreak of a global pandemic.
A decidedly peaky-looking Gwyneth Paltrow plays Patient Zero, no sooner home from the East than she’s dead on a dissecting slab.
mong the medics and bureaucrats trying to contain the situation are Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle and a scene-stealing Elliott Gould.
The weakest links are Jude Law’s conspiracy-theorist blogger, whose Antipodean accent could set off allergic reactions, and the scenes of panic and looting – so cursory that you wish Soderbergh had been able to develop his themes at mini-series length.
Still Scott Z Burns’ shrewd script makes pointed parallels between biological viruses and (mis)information as transmitted online.
Jonathan Romney