A deep dive into the eventually of a pandemic. We get the story from the main point of veiw of several characters. A few of the side story's seem unnecessary but on the most part it all fits together like a jigsaw. The film is fast paced and at times can be hard to follow however it show cases its themes well and will keep you interested until the very end. The film does't really end, you just step into 2020.
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deepfrieddodo31 January 2021Having watched during the COVID-19 pandemic, the accuracy of this film released almost 10 years previous is eerie. Contagion does not skip on the science, and every scene was like a dramatic recap of press conferences in reality. The level of detail the filmmakers went into is phenomenal, and they cannot be credited enough. Even beyond the science of a virus, the human reaction is spot on, notably Jude Law's character, a convincing keyboard warrior.
The cast is packed with A-listers, and although there are a lot of characters, they all have a relatively compelling arc to follow. Evidently it is a big budget film, and the use of sporting venues as medical centres, etc., is perfectly life-like. Obviously, this fictional virus is a lot more aggressive than what is being witnessed currently, but it would be a very dull film if this wasn't the case, and it does well not to jump the shark and doesn't succumb to the urge to make the virus something truly cinematic.
Having said all this, and whilst I don't think for a virus film it could be improved, I do feel that living through something spookily similar does desensitise the audience. You're compelled by the accuracy, but the shocks of the progression and decline of society are hugely lessened when they're lived through every day. -
hannahjhunter19 February 2021I never saw this film when it came out. I just watched it for the first time. It is really unsettling how similar it is to our current pandemic. Even down to the dangers of conspiracy theorists and anti vaxxers. It was obviously really well researched when it was made as expressions such as "R number" and "social distancing" which have only recently become things most of us are aware of. The whole bat thing is actually creepily prophetic.
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danteism11 September 2011Not much to say that hasn't been already the critics are right, it is an effective slick movie that may be a bit slight as far as character development but doesn't suffer too badly for it. This is a movie far more about ideas than people and that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Excellent direction from Soderbergh, masterful cinematography, and while there are a few logical mis-steps, the writing more than makes up for that by confounding expectations more than once in truly creative and credible ways.
Unfortunately trailers have many seeking an action thrill-ride, when what it delivers for the most part is a slow boiling suspenseful drama. When will Hollywood learn that setting expectations that don't match the product may sell a few extra tickets in the beginning, but hurts word of mouth and user reviews which are needed for the success of a film beyond the opening weekend. -
Davor_Blazevic_19597 October 2011Stephen Soderbergh's latest direction, "Contagion" (2011), even though bringing less than expected excitement, is an absorbing movie to watch, efficient as a social and behavioural study, but no less as an accomplished collection of individual case studies, offering sufficiently thought-provoking arguments, such as the fact that--despite all the scientific advances and exhaustive efforts of the thousands of specialists--humankind still stands pretty helpless in the prevention of new viral outbreaks and their many strains occurring globally, when even seemingly well organised societies easily slip into chaos, leaving all individuals to fend for themselves in the ultimate fight for survival, all further fuelled by unstoppable leaks (however, lucrative sensationalism, as well) on an almost inevitable, mutually supportive (money and power shouldn't mix, but mostly they do) corporal and governmental cover-ups. Surely it is a disturbing reminder that even at the most difficult of times, humanity's good traits still get so easily overpowered by the seed of all evil--selfishness and greed.
Many good actors partake in the movie: Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Jennifer Ehle, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, Elliott Gould, to name a few, though one cannot expect remarkable character development when action is dispersed and story spread on so many leads. Nevertheless, Soderbergh knows how to make people count and, albeit somewhat shy about it, he's sufficiently confident in decisive difference their increasingly frequent, self-sacrificing actions could make, having faith in ultimately predominant selflessness and benevolence, kindness and compassion, whether among pre-organised, or ad hoc gathered communities, down to the last individual, rediscovering--now under extreme conditions--their altruism and, as implied in a reserved hope raised towards the end, having--this way or another--humanism in humankind still prevail.
Ian Lipkin, the university professor and epidemiologist, who serves as the director of Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity, agreed to assist as medical consultant in the making of "Contagion" because the film was "an effort to accurately represent the science and to make a movie that would entertain as well as educate." -
redrobin62-321-20731122 February 2020Okay, there's bound to be a lot of similarities with this film to the Novel Coronavirus outbreak that's now reaching around the globe with rapid speed. Of course, "Contagion", being a Hollywood film, the virus spread much faster than the real thing as well as caused way more fatalities. As of this writing (2.21.2020) there are 77,767 cases with 2,360 deaths and 20,833 recovered around the world. And that's pretty fast for a virus that was just recognized 12.31.2019 - not even two months ago. Some of the ideas and behaviors in "Contagion" seemed far fetched, but in the end, it wasn't really that bad of a production consideration the nature of virus infections tend to be mysterious and unknown in the first place.
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davidmvining13 January 2020Sometimes I think people just simply watch movies wrong. Looking through some of the negative reviews of Steven Soderbergh's Contagion was one of those moments. It's a procedural movie that is meant to capture the wide-ranging reality of a massive disease outbreak in the modern era, not a three act drama with character arcs. It's simply a different type of movie than a lot of people are used to, so they don't know how to process it. Anyway...
One of the many things I love about this film is that it starts with Day 2, not Day 1. We don't see the actual origin of the outbreak until the very end of the film when it jumps back in time, so we spend the majority of the film trying to navigate the confusion that is the outbreak. We want to know the source, but we know as little as the WHO and CDC officials trying to track it. Alongside that tracking, though, is the human cost of the disease.
That's mostly handled through Matt Damon's character who watches his wife and stepson die as some of the very first victims of the disease, though he seems to be immune. I expected the film to follow a convention that Damon would be the key to the cure, but it simply never brings up the idea and he's just left to tend to his daughter as they navigate the breakdown of law and order.
The disease spreads quickly, though, and no one in the disease prevention industry can get a grasp on it. They first have trouble limiting it, all efforts of which prove to be futile. Then they have trouble replicating it in a lab setting, which only gets fixed with a non-government doctor ignores orders to destroy his samples and continues his work. They then have trouble figuring out how to actually attack it, until one of the chief scientists circumvents procedure and injects herself with the most promising vaccine they've developed up to that point. Then, the story's still not over, because while they do have the vaccine, they also have millions and millions of people who need it, and they can only make so much at a time, so a lottery gets developed to distribute it out by birthdate.
Another way the movie captures the messy reality of this situation is how it uses its characters in the press. There are two, a journalist for a San Francisco paper and a blogger. The journalist is completely uninterested in the first steps of the disease as they unfold because it's just not corroborated or big enough. The blogger, though, is an anti-vaccine advocate and jumps on the story to feed his own biases. The journalist is too slow, and the blogger ends up using his position as a perceived prophet to profit off of the hysteria by pushing a bunk cure.
The use of major movie stars in seemingly small roles is a very smart decision as well. One of its biggest stars, Gwyneth Paltrow, dies in the first twenty minutes. Another of the major stars dies within an hour. The movie uses star power intelligently, telling the audience that this disease can take out anyone. It increases the tension by helping to cloud the resolution.
It's a movie about this ever changing process to get an unseen threat that's debilitating the world order under control. It's not about characters going through big emotional changes with catharsis for them at the end of the film. It's a thriller on a global scale. What it sets out to do, it does extremely well. I think it's one of the most effective thrillers in decades. -
alan-chan-158-45149126 October 2011Now go and wash your hands! That's what you'll be doing after you see this film. Contagion is a frightening realistic procedural thriller about the spread of an airborne pandemic virus, its impact on an ensemble cast of characters played by a veritable 'Who's Who' of Hollywood and the subsequent race to find a cure.
Like his earlier work 'Traffic', Soderbergh skilfully interweaves the various story lines into a bigger picture that breathlessly tracks and encircles the globe. The cast do not let him down. It's impossible to see a bad performance from Matt Damon and once again his role as a grieving father is sensitively and painfully played. We really feel his sense of sudden and unexpected loss as he struggles to internalise the news of his wife's death, disbelieving, dazed and confused. Marion Cotillard adds an international hue to her role as a World Health Organisation investigator whilst Jude Law plays the role of an insidious Australian blogger, who dangerously undermines the medical establishment's attempts to find a cure for his own conspiratorial and financial gains, to perfection. I could go on; Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle and John Hawkes all provide solid support in a starry cast.
What makes this film so compelling is the way Soderbergh is able to show how unhygienic human beings are and how easy it is to create a pandemic. In hundreds of different absent minded ways we touch our faces on a daily basis and in doing so, transfer and spread dangerous viruses amongst ourselves. Next time you're in the supermarket look out for the number of people who pick their noses, wipe their mouths and cough, sneeze and splutter their way past you without any attempts to cover their mouths. They're picking up (and putting back) the fruit and vegetables, handling groceries and even touching your hand when supermarket staff are giving back your card or change! Worse still, a recent survey showed that although 95% of people say they wash their hands, only 12% actually do so and consequently 1 in 6 mobile phones have faecal bacterial on them and 30% of all handbags. I could go on.
Despite a slightly preposterous storyline when Cotillard is kidnapped in Hong Kong, Soderbergh does portray the breakdown of society in an uncomfortably truthful way when people are suddenly and unexpectedly faced with their own extinction and the instincts of self preservation take over. This could have been explored a little further around the world although at all times the story is grounded in reality. Even the death toll of 27 million worldwide in four months has the ring of truth about it and this is due in no small part to the film's chief scientific adviser, Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University. The televised national lottery in the film is something that I could see happening in the interests of fairness and impartiality when the supply of vaccines is unable to keep up with demand when life and death is only one injection away.
At the film's closing credits one thing stands out and that is the unheralded and heroic work of the thousands of doctors, microbiologists, virologists and vaccine researchers around the world who labour night and day to minimise the effects of such a pandemic occurring which might wipe out the human race. If you're a pessimist like me in this age of global warming, massive deforestation, the depletion of the earth's natural resources, the extinction of wildlife habitats, overpopulation and overcrowding, go figure...a pandemic like the one portrayed in Contagion is inevitable (and long overdue according to the scientific world). The only question that remains is how many people will it kill? Anyway, go and see the film – it's a thought provoking and scary chiller that taps into the current zeitgeist. -
WarMovieCollector25 January 2020This movie has so much similarities between the coronavirus outbreak.
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hprashantarora3 March 2020I knew this was an important movie when it came out. I had not seen anything like this before. Excellent writing, good direction, an invisible antagonist, and most importantly - a sense of realism.
Nine years later, as the Coronavirus disease is running rampant, my mind keeps going back to the horror depicted in this movie. I tried to hold back but my eyes welled up with tears. This should be a must-see movie for the younger generation since it captures the frightening reality of a pandemic and humankind's reaction to it like no movie has ever captured before.
At this moment, in 2020, I know many more will die from Coronavirus, and it is a scary thought. What makes it even more scary for me- my wife is a physician. She reminds me of Kate Winslet's character. She is out there fighting the infection and the fear that comes with it. Like her, she is tireless and compassionate. No movie or documentary can ever capture or portray fear that follows bravery like a dark shadow. Nevertheless, I applaud the audacity of the filmmakers for making such an important movie. As important as this movie is, I sincerely hope no one ever has to make a movie like this in future. -
researcher_1122 March 2020Had I watched this movie few months back , it wouldn't have been a big deal but now it's totally relatable. Literally its like , the current situation was all scripted years back !
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This is a cerebral movie. Many complain about having too many characters, but these characters serve as illustration, the main character is the pandemic, that is explored in non sensationalistic but still interesting and compelling way. The most scary thing about the movie is its realism. Yes, this is what really would happen if there were a pandemic. Not everyone would die, there would be no flashy helicopter drama, but it would not be a pleasant experience either. This is a good movie but perhaps not for the seekers of cheap thrills.
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TruthSeeker8217 December 2020People are calling it a visionary movie but the scientists and epidemiologist always knew how the virus like this will spread. They had many examples of it. I have watched a few videos on this topic and they have been predicting possible pandemics, like COVID-19, for many years. Even the makers of this movie got inspired because of a TED talk by one epidemiologist, named Brilliant. They used his consultation for the movie. In one of the talks I watched, one guy even predicted the shortage of toilet papers in case of any pandemic. It is just normal people, who don't seem to understand, until they face the situation. It makes me wonder about other issues like climate change etc. Will people also understand them when it will be too late?
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rogerdob9 September 2011This picture starts out quite interesting...it shows how fast a disease can travel...we get to see how scientists and doctors react to it (lots of talking)...we also learn about the mechanics of a virus. The disease itself is rather frightening...convulsions and frothing at the mouth. However, after about 30 minutes or so, one realizes all the good parts are over. The movie drags on with various little subplots that really don't add much drama to the film...it gets a little tedious, especially after a cure is found (the movie goes on quite a bit after the cure...not too exciting at this point). The last two minutes of the film is one of the most anticlimactic episodes ever...what was the director thinking?
And what life lesson did we learn from this movie...nothing except that disease can travel fast -
calcmandan16 September 2011People wanted a thrill. People wanted action. People wanted character development. Those elements weren't the intent, however. I'd have to admit expecting an action from the marketing materials and the poster, but I don't judge movies over a preconceived notion or genre. Without throwing out spoilers, I was happy to see that it's more of an ensemble cast than a Matt Damon flick, considering his small role. Yeah, he's Gwyneth's husband, but so what? It was a good analysis on how our country, and the world at large, would react to a real medical epidemic. We saw a few overblown pandemics the last few years with H1N1 and swine flu, and I believe this movie is a what-if thought experiment on steroids. They even paid homage to the real world examples near the conclusion. Granted, the real world issues turned out to be media overhype more than a real medical scare and I believe the movie covered the media in a brilliant way. I liked this movie because it was a societal study rather than just an updated 'Outbreak.' Regarding character development, there really wasn't a place for it in this movie. The only thing that touches it was the budding relationship between the two youngsters. On the other hand, I could, just as easily, write that off as a symbol of human strength, desire, and endurance since it survived the epidemic from beginning to the end. Favorite actor for the movie: Jude Law. He really sunk his teeth into his role and I really wanted to hate him. Great job.
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fischer_patrick24 March 2022This is a well made film with an all star cast. It was certainly prophetic having come out 9 years before the covid-19 pandemic. The film is a mover and just goes at this break neck pace from start to finish. While that was effective for the first two acts in driving home the fear, it hurt the last act. The resolution felt like it was too rushed. That being said, solid film with a great cast.
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user-355835 March 2022Went back and watched this as the real pandemic is finally hopefully coming to an end. Had forgotten how much it predicted and parallels how this virus has played out in reality, except that as of early 2022 we're actually in better shape than those in this film. Well done, paced and a great cast carries you through some sobering (now real life) scenes.
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RobTheWatcher3 March 2022A wildly interesting watch.. especially given the current times we live in. Ultimately the movie suffers from too much going on in too short of a time span. This concept and plot would've been better suited for a series. Regardless, it was decently well done and a good watch.
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cardsrock23 October 2020As I watch this film many months into COVID and at the end of my infectious disease/immunology unit in medical school, I'm in awe of how accurate of a portrayal this is of a pandemic. It's truly incredible how many things in this movie come to fruition nearly a decade later. It's a testament to the writer, director, and most of all the scientists who were consulted for this movie.
The film itself is fascinating and fast-moving. Bolstered by an all-star cast, the movie is brutally realistic and unflinching in its bleak view of how quickly a virus can spread throughout populations. Matt Damon anchors the cast and keeps the human drama at the forefront. All of the science used in the film is very accurate and also very easy for anyone to understand. Contagion is a tense, brilliant thriller which isn't the typical three act movie, but a more focused look at the scary potential of a global pandemic. -
ajashby-447195 April 2022Who would have thought a movie that came out in 2011 would mirror what is happening now. I would have thought this movie was kind of far-fetched if I had watched it when it first came out but now it's like step by step how Covid went.
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rajitecture24 February 2021It's amazing how close this movie nailed it. This movie probably didn't make a lot of sense back in the day, but now knowing what actually happens in a pandemic, props to the writers. This movie captured it all. I really give them credit for all the key worries related to a pandemic.
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BigBudde30 August 2011I saw this movie at a pre-screening in St. Louis. I thought it was good, and I did enjoy it, but I also thought it could have been better. It's about a virus outbreak that is untreatable, and threatens the whole world's population. I thought it had a kind of 'CSI' vibe to me. I liked the way the story showed what day it was, place, etc, and kind of followed the outbreak across the globe. The acting by Matt Damon and Jude Law was great, but overall it just didn't have enough conflict. I felt like I had seen it before in similar movies, and there was no main protagonist/bad guy to fight against (well, besides the virus itself, of course!) The film made me think about germs, diseases, and government cover ups. Which are all too real even today. I did really like the last scene and how the movie came full circle. Overall though, I felt like it could have gone somewhere, but didn't. But still I enjoyed it and would recommend it, it's just not one of my favorites. 7/10
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debopomdebroy15 March 2020In 2011 the idea seemed very far fetched and the jargons uses wasn't really connected to the audience. But but experiencing the horror of Corona virus and researching a lot about it the movie makes a lot of sense and it's far more connected. It's actually a visionary movie,just released ahead of time... Because most of us wouldn't have experienced it!
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Released in 2011, this film could easily have been written as what could happen with a virus such as Covid-19. It's realistic in some aspects, because viruses can spread rapidly and there have been viruses hitting humans throughout history, some more deadly than others.
The film could be seen as over-dramatic but as we know fear can spread as quickly as a virus. I think it does a pretty good job, even if it is a bit too close to home, for comfort! -
donfuan7 November 2011"Contagion" fails on two points, which are utterly important ones.
First: It has absolutely no point at all.
If you break the story down it is "a global epidemic breaks out, a cure is found, the epidemic is over". Now i'm not even remotely competent in writing, but my guess is, if you would show something like this to your teacher, he'll send you home and say "do this again". There is no climax, no surprising plot turn.
Second: There are way to many protagonists.
The only one that really interested me was the Kate Winslet plot, but she dies fast. The Fishbourne plot could have had potential, but doesn't get enough time. The Damon plot was just bad and the Cotillard plot nonexistent. The whole thing frays out like an old t-shirt.
We could have had a film that focuses on the global epidemic and the strife of an high ranking government official, the global epidemic and a father-daughter relationship or the global epidemic and the fight against it from a low ranking official at the front-line. All of that could have potential to make a decent film out of it, but instead it touches all of these and leaves you clueless as to what this whole thing was about.