Review of Contagion (2011) by Edgar C — 06 Jan 2014

When you take the concept of a pandemic worldwide infection, you take big risks. The repercussions are of unimaginable proportions, and affect all aspects of living, and all economic and social policies of the nations. It's something virtually impossible to put on film. Therefore, the option is to focus on only one aspect (two at the most, but with fragmented results) of the disease. You can choose the military action, the response of the scientific community, the political perspective, the mass media coverage with possible filtering of information, or from the tragic point of view, as we see people struggling against a gigantic invisible monster hard to beat, and that spreads death and mass fear in every corner, from family losses to transcultural manifestations. A pandemic infection basically turns all aspects of life upside down.

Soderbergh, seemingly, never made up his mind, and took the safest route: "Let's compile all." From that moment, your feature film is condemned to mediocrity or failure with a 97.5% probability (sorry, I love math). This is not a failure, but falls short on several aspects. Making a desperate attempt to cover several points of view, we are presented glimpses of the political responses, manifestations, corruption, the scientific community, medical science, conspirations, and Matt Damon's family which suited no purpose whatsoever. It's a very, very ambitious experiment that you should undertake only if you are sure that you will be able to handle it, AND if you know well what aspect you want to emphasize.

The result here was a hypothetical speculation uneven in pacing, with several points of view to be told, all of them interesting (and relevant), all of them unconcluded at various degrees. Despite this, it never runs out of fuel and guarantees at least an entertaining watch with a pleasant cast and a noticeable effort behind the screenplay. Still, I simply cannot forgive the preposterous "spoon-feeding" ending, which is authentic roll-your-eyes material. I kept thinking of the old Peter Greengrass while watching this, wondering how better the film could have been.

63/100.