Contagion

Director - Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's Eleven, Magic Mike)

Starring - Matt Damon (True Grit, Titan A.E.), Kate Winslet (Heavenly Creatures, Titanic), and Jude Law (Captain Marvel, Cold Mountain)

Release Date - 2011

Genre - Drama/Thriller

Tagline - "Nothing spreads like fear"

Format - UHD (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     I've reviewed several films centered around the pandemic over the last few years.  This is understandable considering how significantly our lives changed for those few years and the amount of lives lost to selfishness and ignorance.  In the early days of the pandemic I recall several social media friends decided to marathon films centered around pandemics and outbreaks.  I was considered essential so I had to work and wasn't able to partake in these marathons but I did remember seeing several people watching Contagion.  I was not familiar with the film but seeing that cast really made my imagination run.  Its only been four short years since the pandemic began and I've yet to see the film.  However, this soon changed when I was sent over the 4K release of the film.  I had never seen it before but I'm glad I was finally given the opportunity.

     The film follows a group of different people from various backgrounds as the struggle during an outbreak. We follow a family man who loses his wife at the very beginning of the pandemic as he struggles with keeping the rest of his family safe. We also follow a conspiracy theorist who suspects that something more is going on with the outbreak and government officials are hiding information from the public. We also follow several different scientists and professionals as they rush to stop the spread of the disease and find a cure. 

      I knew nothing about this one going into it aside from the fact that it revolved around a dangerous pandemic, and it had a great cast. While I did enjoy it and I'm glad that my first viewing of it was in 4K, I still wish I would have taken the time to watch it during the beginning of the pandemic. Seeing the parallels and how much of this actually happened during that first year of the shut-down made my skin crawl. I really enjoyed this movie and can't wait to recommend it to others. The acting in this one is fantastic, which is an understatement when you conder the cast. I could spend all day going through this cast and how amazing they were but I'm too lazy for that. There are no weak links in this film and some of Hollywood's biggest names deliver some of the most underrated performances of their career. The story for this one is very well written and the team behind it clearly did their research. Watching this film, especially the first 30 minutes of so, took me back to 2020 and how the pandemic started, how different organizations, political parties, and so on were at each other's throats with little care about the lives they were influencing. I loved how well this was written and could only imagine how it would have influenced me during the early days of the pandemic. With that being said, the film feels like it was originally setting out to be a television series or mini-series. The way it's edited together we bounce from character to character with no rhyme or reason as the world around them falls apart. Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing film but it feels like everything was edited together to make a film after they originally planned on making a series of some sort. Finally, the film is not a bloody one. There are some great make-up effects and one scene in particular featuring an autopsy of Gwyneth Paltrow that was amazing but that is the extent of it. Overall, Contagion is one hell of a thriller that blows my mind by how close it was to predicting the 2020 pandemic. It's a great film and this 4K release is gorgeous. I highly recommend checking it out.