Movie Info
Movie Year:
Cast:
Screenplay:
Scott Z. Burns
Genre:
Thriller,
Sci-Fi/Fantasy,
Horror/Suspense,
Drama,
Studio:
Disney
Genre:
Action/Adventure
Other
Horror/Suspense
Television
Romance
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Thriller
Animation
Comedy
Documentary
Drama
Kids/Family
Studio:
DVD Release:
2012/01/03
Theater Release:
2011/09/09
Blu-ray Release:
No release information.
Blu-ray 3D Release:
No release information.
DVD Release:
(ex. 2002/10/21)
Synopsis:
Tagline:
No Tagline yet. Add
Dec 19, 2011
Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) is an executive on a business trip to Hong Kong. Coming home, she feels a bit under the weather, but within a day she is ...
Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) is an executive on a business trip to Hong Kong. Coming home, she feels a bit under the weather, but within a day she is dead along with her young son who also caught the bug and died. Meanwhile, people from all around the world are getting sick, and it appears to be an epidemic. The World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control have their top people on it, trying to figure out what it is and where it started, but it looks like a pandemic is inevitable which could wipe out a quarter of the planet.
This exciting thrill ride of a movie has some great stars in it. From Paltrow, to Laurence Fishburn, to Matt Damon, to Kate Winslett. Even the rest of the cast it pretty good. It’s fast paced and they give us the medical jargon in a way not to lose the layman. We get to learn a lot about how it works, and how quickly the Homeland Security guys can figure it must be a terrorist attack. Very suspenseful, this deals with the aftermath of such a panic, from fires and quarantines, to looting and rioting. Part science and medicine, and part action and adventure, it’s a wild ride from start to finish.
I saw this film on IMAX and it was nice to see it bright and clear with a wonderful sound system on a huge screen. IMAX was not wasted on this film, although it’s certainly not critical to enjoying it. This will be just as good on DVD later, as it’s a good strong story. Yes, it’s been done before, but it’s a fresh approach to telling the story, with a little surprise at the end, just before the credits to make it worth waiting for. It was lots of bang for the buck, and not a bad, “end of the summer” film. It’s good it didn’t have to compete with the huge blockbusters this summer, because it would have been lost. But now, with not so very much to choose from, it’s a good escape from the real world. Or could this be our future after all? Time will tell.
==Written by Ed Goettman ==
==From: Ed's Review Dot Com (www.edsreview.com)==
This exciting thrill ride of a movie has some great stars in it. From Paltrow, to Laurence Fishburn, to Matt Damon, to Kate Winslett. Even the rest of the cast it pretty good. It’s fast paced and they give us the medical jargon in a way not to lose the layman. We get to learn a lot about how it works, and how quickly the Homeland Security guys can figure it must be a terrorist attack. Very suspenseful, this deals with the aftermath of such a panic, from fires and quarantines, to looting and rioting. Part science and medicine, and part action and adventure, it’s a wild ride from start to finish.
I saw this film on IMAX and it was nice to see it bright and clear with a wonderful sound system on a huge screen. IMAX was not wasted on this film, although it’s certainly not critical to enjoying it. This will be just as good on DVD later, as it’s a good strong story. Yes, it’s been done before, but it’s a fresh approach to telling the story, with a little surprise at the end, just before the credits to make it worth waiting for. It was lots of bang for the buck, and not a bad, “end of the summer” film. It’s good it didn’t have to compete with the huge blockbusters this summer, because it would have been lost. But now, with not so very much to choose from, it’s a good escape from the real world. Or could this be our future after all? Time will tell.
==Written by Ed Goettman ==
==From: Ed's Review Dot Com (www.edsreview.com)==
Nov 17, 2011
Steven Soderbergh has always been an articulate director, quick to try new ideas and test various theories; in the case of “Contagion,” his new pandem ...
Steven Soderbergh has always been an articulate director, quick to try new ideas and test various theories; in the case of “Contagion,” his new pandemic thriller, he's been upfront about the number of things he and writer Scott Z. Burns didn’t want to indulge in, a kind of cliché deterrence list. No around-the-globe montages, no shots of the president or the government deliberating; in short, nothing beyond the scope of what each individual character would see or be doing. It’s a noble goal, and Soderbergh is always at his best when he’s investigating process; for roughly the first half of “Contagion,” he creates a fascinating study of the ground-level grunt work involved in identifying, studying, containing and ultimately curing a mystery uber-disease. That the last act of the film fails so precipitously is another mystery altogether.
The multi-thread narrative kicks off with Gwyneth Paltrow returning home from a business trip, contaminated by the mystery illness; its no spoiler to say that she’s dead within minutes of her first appearance. More disturbing is how quickly her son contracts the illness and also perishes. Matt Damon is the grieving husband, step father to the deceased young boy and frantic to protect the still healthy daughter from his first marriage. Laurence Fishburne is the head of the CDC, who quickly dispatches field agent Kate Winslet to gather information and coordinate quarantine zones; meanwhile, we get a fairly extensive first hand look at scientists trying to identify and quantify the disease. These early scenes are largely fantastic, with just the right amount of technical jargon to sound intelligent and legitimately realistic, shot and cut with a brisk efficiency.
To his credit, Soderbergh's mis-en-scene nicely accentuates the proceedings. He places his camera at a restrained distance from the action, not as some kind of under-a-microscope affectation, but in an effort to capture the human figure within a specific, particular space. Scenes unfold without adornment, and on several occasions, the restraint gives way to huge cavernous spaces (Winslet commandeering a school gym as an internment space for the infected) or more subjective POVs (odd flashbacks that trace Paltrow’s Chinese business trip cum eventual infection). The contrasts prove to be startlingly effective—up to a point.
Damon is nicely understated and surprisingly shlubby (he’s always been able to slip nicely into ‘regular guy’ roles) as the put-upon father, and Winslet is another standout, all firm resolve and we-don’t-have-time-for-this brusqueness. Her dealings with local bureaucrats and idiotically dense red tape are the kind of nuts-and-bolts grittiness usually glazed over in thrillers. Marion Cotillard fairs less well in a tossed off abduction subplot (pity the lack of a larger exploration of tensions between nations), while Jude Law hams it up as a disgusting blogger fermenting political discontent online. His role is a remarkably missed opportunity—as more than a few critics have pointed out, one of the film’s key themes is information spreading like a disease, and doing about as much harm. That’s a fascinating hook, but Law overplays the entire thing, aided and abetted by a ridiculous snaggle tooth peeking from beneath his lips, which may as well be a mustache for him to twirl.
And then there's the last act. It’s a kind of irony that so much of the early goings on in the film are seriously contracted, lingering on details and minutia only to then collapse seemingly two hours of narrative material into 30 or so minutes. Some critics have claimed that Soderbergh is ‘cold,’ perhaps as a result of the steady accumulation of so much detail and, yes, the avoidance of cliché. Yet the film ends with a flurry of useless activity, as narratives reach predictable end points and fairly standard emotional closure abounds. By the end of the film, something like over one hundred million people have died, but there’s a lack of scope at play. We don’t feel the absence of these people. (One cliché Soderbergh doesn’t avoid: piles and piles of garbage on a city street as a cheap symbol of societal disintegration.)
I’m not suggesting “Contagion” should play like the more apocalyptic entries in this genre—the collapse on display here is not on the level of "The Road," or Haneke’s "The Time of the Wolf." In fact, an interesting (yet relatively unexplored) moment late in the film has Damon enter a shopping mall, followed by an elliptical cut, eliding some kind of narrative information from the audience. Damon’s wrist is scanned by an employee, giving him entry to an upscale dress store. We soon learn people given a vaccine also receive a wrist ban, complete with bar code that grants them access to public spaces. It’s an interesting idea, but again, the process leading to the implementation of such a device is truncated. Another lost opportunity, to my mind: investigating how commerce would respond to such an epidemic could have been a fascinating subplot. There’s no lack of ideas or ambition on Soderbergh’s part, but his desire to sidestep the trivial goes too far—he leaves too much wasted potential on the cutting room floor. One wishes he would take the chance of boring us in an effort to show us something truly new.
==Written by Daniel Gorman==
==From: In Review Online (www.inreviewonline.com)==
The multi-thread narrative kicks off with Gwyneth Paltrow returning home from a business trip, contaminated by the mystery illness; its no spoiler to say that she’s dead within minutes of her first appearance. More disturbing is how quickly her son contracts the illness and also perishes. Matt Damon is the grieving husband, step father to the deceased young boy and frantic to protect the still healthy daughter from his first marriage. Laurence Fishburne is the head of the CDC, who quickly dispatches field agent Kate Winslet to gather information and coordinate quarantine zones; meanwhile, we get a fairly extensive first hand look at scientists trying to identify and quantify the disease. These early scenes are largely fantastic, with just the right amount of technical jargon to sound intelligent and legitimately realistic, shot and cut with a brisk efficiency.
To his credit, Soderbergh's mis-en-scene nicely accentuates the proceedings. He places his camera at a restrained distance from the action, not as some kind of under-a-microscope affectation, but in an effort to capture the human figure within a specific, particular space. Scenes unfold without adornment, and on several occasions, the restraint gives way to huge cavernous spaces (Winslet commandeering a school gym as an internment space for the infected) or more subjective POVs (odd flashbacks that trace Paltrow’s Chinese business trip cum eventual infection). The contrasts prove to be startlingly effective—up to a point.
Damon is nicely understated and surprisingly shlubby (he’s always been able to slip nicely into ‘regular guy’ roles) as the put-upon father, and Winslet is another standout, all firm resolve and we-don’t-have-time-for-this brusqueness. Her dealings with local bureaucrats and idiotically dense red tape are the kind of nuts-and-bolts grittiness usually glazed over in thrillers. Marion Cotillard fairs less well in a tossed off abduction subplot (pity the lack of a larger exploration of tensions between nations), while Jude Law hams it up as a disgusting blogger fermenting political discontent online. His role is a remarkably missed opportunity—as more than a few critics have pointed out, one of the film’s key themes is information spreading like a disease, and doing about as much harm. That’s a fascinating hook, but Law overplays the entire thing, aided and abetted by a ridiculous snaggle tooth peeking from beneath his lips, which may as well be a mustache for him to twirl.
And then there's the last act. It’s a kind of irony that so much of the early goings on in the film are seriously contracted, lingering on details and minutia only to then collapse seemingly two hours of narrative material into 30 or so minutes. Some critics have claimed that Soderbergh is ‘cold,’ perhaps as a result of the steady accumulation of so much detail and, yes, the avoidance of cliché. Yet the film ends with a flurry of useless activity, as narratives reach predictable end points and fairly standard emotional closure abounds. By the end of the film, something like over one hundred million people have died, but there’s a lack of scope at play. We don’t feel the absence of these people. (One cliché Soderbergh doesn’t avoid: piles and piles of garbage on a city street as a cheap symbol of societal disintegration.)
I’m not suggesting “Contagion” should play like the more apocalyptic entries in this genre—the collapse on display here is not on the level of "The Road," or Haneke’s "The Time of the Wolf." In fact, an interesting (yet relatively unexplored) moment late in the film has Damon enter a shopping mall, followed by an elliptical cut, eliding some kind of narrative information from the audience. Damon’s wrist is scanned by an employee, giving him entry to an upscale dress store. We soon learn people given a vaccine also receive a wrist ban, complete with bar code that grants them access to public spaces. It’s an interesting idea, but again, the process leading to the implementation of such a device is truncated. Another lost opportunity, to my mind: investigating how commerce would respond to such an epidemic could have been a fascinating subplot. There’s no lack of ideas or ambition on Soderbergh’s part, but his desire to sidestep the trivial goes too far—he leaves too much wasted potential on the cutting room floor. One wishes he would take the chance of boring us in an effort to show us something truly new.
==Written by Daniel Gorman==
==From: In Review Online (www.inreviewonline.com)==
Jan 06, 2012
We’ve seen our share of epidemics as humans. Even today we have the occasional scare, from the many flavors of the flu to West Nile and Anthrax.Contag ...
We’ve seen our share of epidemics as humans. Even today we have the occasional scare, from the many flavors of the flu to West Nile and Anthrax.Contagion is a film that plays off of the fears of a global outbreak. In the technology age where things are quickly taken for granted, the idea of an unknown lethal virus spreading through the air is a pretty scary thought. It’s kind of like a zombie movie, but without that whole coming back to life thing.
The movie features an ensemble cast, which can be both the highlight and pitfall of the film. There are so many good players with dynamic characters on the screen, however not enough time is devoted to them all. Being that the scenario is global, it’s understandable that the film has to jump around, but it would have been nice to have one or two key characters that played a larger role in the bigger picture.
The story starts out with Gwyneth Paltrow’s character being among the first of reported deaths from the virus. Starting in Asia, the virus quickly spans the globe. Screen captions with city names and population somehow add an eeriness to the picture during the location jumps. Doctors and health organizations across the globe (played heavy hitters such as Laurence Fishburne, Kate WInslet, and Marion Cotillard) are in a race to get a handle on the situation.
Then there are characters that add more relevant dimensions. Matt Damon plays the immune husband of Paltrow’s character, who also loses his step-son but has a surviving daughter. This angle of the story provides a close-to-home feeling that shows that someone like this can happen to anyone. Then there’s Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law), a popular blogger with questionable motives. As social media is ever so present in our lives, Law’s character represents our reliance on technology as well as the dangerous repercussions of having influence.
Fast, ominous electronic music leads us in between scenes and effectively makes us feel that the clock is ticking. For some reason, when I first saw a promotional poster for the film, my first though was that it looked like a Soderbergh movie just judging from the colors the feeling the images put off. I guess it isn’t so suprising since his recent films such as The Girlfriend Experience and Solaris had a great impact on me. Contagion is an example of his sleek style and nice use of music.
Not only is Contagion a smart and clean fast-paced thriller, but it can also be seen as a realistic horror film that could actually happen. The thought of how many things we touch and breathe in every day can be scary if you think about it enough, let alone if there is the real threat of a deadly virus making it’s way across the globe.
==Written by Nicolas ==
==From: Critic Nic (www.criticnic.com)==
The movie features an ensemble cast, which can be both the highlight and pitfall of the film. There are so many good players with dynamic characters on the screen, however not enough time is devoted to them all. Being that the scenario is global, it’s understandable that the film has to jump around, but it would have been nice to have one or two key characters that played a larger role in the bigger picture.
The story starts out with Gwyneth Paltrow’s character being among the first of reported deaths from the virus. Starting in Asia, the virus quickly spans the globe. Screen captions with city names and population somehow add an eeriness to the picture during the location jumps. Doctors and health organizations across the globe (played heavy hitters such as Laurence Fishburne, Kate WInslet, and Marion Cotillard) are in a race to get a handle on the situation.
Then there are characters that add more relevant dimensions. Matt Damon plays the immune husband of Paltrow’s character, who also loses his step-son but has a surviving daughter. This angle of the story provides a close-to-home feeling that shows that someone like this can happen to anyone. Then there’s Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law), a popular blogger with questionable motives. As social media is ever so present in our lives, Law’s character represents our reliance on technology as well as the dangerous repercussions of having influence.
Fast, ominous electronic music leads us in between scenes and effectively makes us feel that the clock is ticking. For some reason, when I first saw a promotional poster for the film, my first though was that it looked like a Soderbergh movie just judging from the colors the feeling the images put off. I guess it isn’t so suprising since his recent films such as The Girlfriend Experience and Solaris had a great impact on me. Contagion is an example of his sleek style and nice use of music.
Not only is Contagion a smart and clean fast-paced thriller, but it can also be seen as a realistic horror film that could actually happen. The thought of how many things we touch and breathe in every day can be scary if you think about it enough, let alone if there is the real threat of a deadly virus making it’s way across the globe.
==Written by Nicolas ==
==From: Critic Nic (www.criticnic.com)==
In the 21st Century, terrorists have developed a new way to strike: disease. Not only have they created a deadly Level Four Ebola virus, their first victim is the President of the United States. The virus is particularly contagious and is spreading. If a cure cannot be found, the only chance for saving the world from epidemic is for the army to destroy the hospital and the town where the victims, including the President, are currently contained. The clock is ticking. As doctors search for a cure the military seeks to annihilate them all in a race to stop the deadly path of the contagion. Can the spread be stopped before its too late?
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Movie Disc Details
Disc Version:
Runtime:
106
DVD Region:
A, B, C
Disc Type:
BD
Aspect Ratio:
16:9
Video Format:
MPEG-4 AVC
Parental Control:
1
Video Signal:
PAL
Layers:
1
Subtitles:
English (United States)
Spanish (Spain, Traditional Sort)
Sound Mix:
DTS-HD Master Audio
Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital
