Contagion is disturbingly realistic

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      Starring Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, and Jude Law. Rated PG. Opens Friday, September 9, at the Ridge Theatre

      All you people who don’t wash your hands after using restrooms, here’s hoping Contagion will so scare you that you’ll develop a personal-hygiene OCD. Really, Steven Soderbergh’s disturbingly realistic sci-fi thriller might so freak out those of us who wouldn’t dream of sticking our paws into those bowls of cocktail peanuts in bars that we’ll probably end up fetal-curling in our bedroom closets.

      Contagion is actually very reminiscent of Soderbergh’s grittily riveting Traffic, except it tracks a fast-moving infectious virus instead of illegal drugs. (This virus will make you want to do drugs.) Once again, the director has nabbed a stellar supply of serious, credible stars to lead his hapless audience into in-your-face experiences with a global pandemic. You’ll feel like Malcolm McDowell’s Alex with his eyes propped open in A Clockwork Orange.

      Matt Damon plays Mitch, a Minneapolis Everyman whose wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns from Hong Kong with a cough that they initially ignore but which makes us very nervous. Marion Cotillard is a World Health Organization investigator who heads to Asia to try to track the disease to “patient zero”. Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, and the excellent Jennifer Ehle are doctors and a scientist, respectively, trying to keep their heads while heading off the virus. And Jude Law makes mischief blogging bioterrorism and pharmaceutical conspiracy theories.

      Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns and the director who prefers hoisting that coolly detached yet penetrating hand-held camera himself build such an acute sense of dread, tension, and claustrophobia that it’s hard to watch people merely eating and drinking in a restaurant—let alone coughing on public transportation. But Cotillard’s detective work in Hong Kong’s casinos and office towers also makes Contagion a first-class piece of chilling, shocking suspense.

      Now stop touching your face!


      Watch the trailer for Contagion.

      Comments

      2 Comments

      Just a Girl

      Sep 10, 2011 at 3:46pm

      RE:All you people who don’t wash your hands after using restrooms, here’s hoping Contagion will so scare you that you’ll develop a personal-hygiene OCD.

      You guys have no idea how many girls at the club all dressed up looking so fierce and sexy are SO dirty and Don't wash their hands in the bathroom. as a girl, I am repulsed by there lack of hygiene so much so i never touch anything they do..even the guys ..because I know where there hands have been. YUK!

      LostMyGlasses

      Sep 10, 2011 at 5:07pm

      Has modern cinema taken such a dive that an idea re-hashed too many times but done in a 'realistic way' is fawned over?

      Originality is dead. Can't wait for the next Batman movie. I heard it'll be realistic. Not.