I hope Contagion is not contagious

I have to be completely honest with you I knew nothing about Contagion going into it. I was expecting Outbreak the next generation but, instead I got something much different. The film begins with a close up of a nasty looking Beth Emhoff, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, waiting at the airport. The bottom of the screen reads Day 2. We soon learn Beth just had some hurry up and go sex, while on a layover in Chicago. We then cut to Roger, a janitor played by John Hawkes, who works in Ellis Cheever’s building. Ellis is a Dr. played by Laurence Fishburne. We then cut to Alan Krumwiede, a blogger trying to sell a story, I will be honest this goes on the whole movie. I mean up till the last 10 minutes new characters are still being introduced, It felt like a really poor Ocean’s movie. I mean I have still yet to get to Matt Damon playing Mitch Emhoff and he is as close as this movie gets to a main character, there is at least 5 different stories running at the same time, Damon’s is the only one with an ending. After the first 80 or so characters are introduced in the first 10 minutes people start dying. No one panics, just more characters are introduced. Then more people start dying then all hell breaks loose, this is all in about the first 30 minutes, to go any further would be spoilers.

Like I wrote earlier the film plays like a really poor Ocean’s 11. I was thinking halfway through, the director must really like Steven Soderbergh. I mean he kept trying to imitate the man, it just had none of the cool style Soderbergh has, imagine my surprise when the first credit to pop up at the end was directed by Steven Soderbergh. To say he was not on his game would be an understatement, no one in this movie is on their game. When Matt Damon delivers what should be a tear jerking moment the whole audience laughed, that was a major problem with this film unintentional hilarious moments, if this film was a comedy it would rival the Hangover. I believe that was because there was so many characters and nowhere near enough time to like any of them, every big dramatic scene felt like a “Mad Tv” bit.

And please for the love God can someone tell me why this movie has so many plot holes?  People are getting sick so the whole country shuts down? Really? In America, the country that created greed is good shuts down everything due to a bug. I don’t think so, there’s a point in the movie where some cities are being quarantined, and everyone tries to leave. Why? It’s a virus not a flood, its not like Houston is bad but Dallas is good. No matter where you are you must be careful. Well not in the world of Contagion, don’t even get me started on the riots and mass mobs. The films biggest flaw is not that it spends time introducing tons of characters, it’s that it does not follow up with those characters. A perfect example of this is Leonora Orantes played by Marion Cotillard, we spend 20 minutes with her and have no clue what happened to her, it’s things like this that make this film really grate on the nerves.

So the bottom line is the film is like its characters, sick. Make no mistake the movie is not dead, I like it just for the laughs. It’s just far from being a good healthy movie, it will make a good rental but for now rent outbreak