CONTAGION (Steven Soderbergh). 105 minutes. Opens Friday (September 9). See listing. Rating: NNN
Think of Contagion as a disease procedural. Like a police procedural, it’s less about the people involved and more about the work they do. And it’s more fun than you might expect.
An American woman and her young son catch an unknown bug and die within 48 hours. More cases erupt around the world. The potential for death is in the millions. The Centre for Disease Control shifts into gear, tracking the woman’s movements, analyzing the virus, informing local officials, setting up quarantine centres and looking for a cure.
Matt Damon stands in as an everyman who loses his wife and son early on and struggles through isolation, food shortages, looting and social breakdown. Kate Winslet pumps out reams of exposition as a doctor. So does Jennifer Ehle as a researcher desperate for a human guinea pig. Laurence Fishburne plays the CDC chief, facing a hearing and pilloried in the media, which is represented by Jude Law, who is very credible as an influential blogger with a private agenda. None of these stories resolves as you might expect.
The action takes place over almost a year, but Soderbergh keeps it zipping along like a thriller with clean images, short, sharp scenes, lots of purely visual storytelling and liberal use of Cliff Martinez’s pounding score.
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