Contagion

Steven Soderbergh has been a prolific director since 1998, directing nearly a movie a year including: (deep breath) Erin Brokovich, Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven, Solaris, Che, The Informant! and many, many more.

In 2011 alone Soderbergh made three films: The Last Time I Saw Michael Gregg, Contagion and Haywire whilst producing His Way, a TV documentary, and We Need To Talk About Kevin. As I said, prolific.

This particular film, written by Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum, The Informant!), centres around the threat of a major disease outbreak and what organisations such as the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and the WHO (World Health Organisation) would do about it.

It’s hard to say who the main character is, this is more of an ensemble piece. Gwyneth Paltrow stars in flashback mainly as Matt Damon’s wife, the latter in one of his best roles to date.

Laurence Fishburne plays the main man at the CDC who orders Kate Winslet around a lot, Jude Law (Australian accent…why?) plays a blogger with conspiracy theories ahoy and Bryan Cranston plays Fishburne’s boss.

The weakest character is by far Jude Law, he doesn’t really add anything to the story and you can see he’s there to distract and attempt to throw the viewer of the trail but he doesn’t quite manage it. It’s not Law’s fault, he makes the best (accent apart) of what he’s given.

It’s hard to say much about the story line without giving things away, also, it’s not exactly the best story in terms of characters and development, that you’ll ever see.

However, it’s a fine movie with some quality directing from Soderbergh with an excellent way of advancing the story in an almost silent movie fashion.

Suspense aplenty but something would stop you from giving it five stars…