Film Review: "Contagion"

Director Steven Soderbergh's Contagion hits the screens like a wet cough this weekend, a star-laden, multi-threaded narrative that is basically a monster movie writ microscopic. The nano-Goliaths are fast-replicating viruses, transmitted unwittingly by too-trusting humans with their penchant for handshakes, faith in sanitary restaurants and utter carelessness when it comes to touching one's face after grasping, say, a hand-rail on an escalator. Subsequent to watching this film, you'll think twice about doing so ever again.

But for all its obsessing about the insidious and lethal world of micro-organisms, this breezy, 105-minute docudrama feels sterile and antiseptic, as if it were shot and edited in a clean room. Admittedly conceived of by Soderbergh as a disaster picture in the mold of producer Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno) — lots of stars, lots of scarifying — Contagion fills one not so much with dread and fear as it does a kind of scientific detachment. This is a $60-million Hollywood version of a junior-high school health-education film (albeit with MTV-video-worthy, sleek production values).

And I think I have a vague inkling of why this polished, fast-paced, ticking-bomb of a story never quite grabbed me by the heartstrings: lack of a clearly defined hero or antagonist (besides the wily virus). Matt Damon is cast as a kind of Everyman stand-in for public indignation and frustration. His philandering wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) caught the lethal bug while on a business trip, and his quest to save himself and his daughter almost occupies center stage in this sprawling, vertically-constructed multi-tale. But Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds he ain't. He's just one spoke in a very big story-wheel.

There are plenty of aspirants to the heroic laurels — Laurence Fishburne as a mildly unethical public health official; Elliott Gould as a tireless medical researcher trying to decode the virus's identity; Marion Cotillard as a kidnapped WHO official; and Jennifer Ehle and Kate Winslet as smart, brave, white-coated women who hate the monster with a virulence and dedication equal to its own life-destroying power. The only proper human antagonist is a manipulative, profit-seeking blogger played for evil laughs by Jude Law. Soderbergh even equipped him with a bad, British-looking front tooth to thoroughly villainize his look. Ugh!

By the time the curtain falls on this post-AIDS epidemic-epic, 26 million people have met their maker, and the ones who remain have gone into a law-breaking panic. First, pharmacies are looted, then grocery stores and private homes become fair game. Humanity — or what remains of it — begins to look as vicious and self-interested as the determined little virus that only wants to find a home wherein it can feed and replicate. This misanthropic vision of our craven species may be accurate, but it doesn't make for a rousing third act, as we rise up as one against the pitiless enemy. You'll leave the theater feeling lousy and dispirited, and not touching anything or anyone until you've donned rubber gloves.