My wife and I got a call the other day from our local movie store saying, since we hadn’t been in there in a while (we’ve been getting our movies through Netflix), they were giving us a free rental. My wife decided to take advantage of that yesterday and picked up a movie that was recommended to her by some of her coworkers, “Contagion.”
When she told me she got this movie, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from it. There are plenty of movies out there about people catching some sort of disease that is either fatal or turns them into a zombie and I didn’t know if there was going to be anything special about this film. But, since it was free, I sat down with her last night to watch it. And, I have to admit, it was better than expected.
A married woman ( Gwyneth Paltrow ) comes into contact with a new virus while on business in Hong Kong and, before dying herself, spreads it to several people she comes into contact with (including a lover in Chicago). Since there is no cure and the disease can be transmitted through touch, it spreads at an alarming rate, infecting and killing a large amount of the population.
The thing that impressed me about this movie is just how realistic it is. Not only do you have a disease that can be spread as easily as the flu, you have everything from government red tape to a web blogger looking to become rich making problems worse. In other words, it’s one of those movies that keeps you interested both because you don’t know who is going to die next and because it is something that could easily happen tomorrow (I’m definitely thinking twice about traveling to another country now).
My only real complaint about this movie is, even though it was still entertaining, it did tend to drag on a bit at times. As I told my wife, it lacked any real suspense or action and probably could have used a nice, drawn out riot scene.
However, despite that, I think this is a movie that is worth taking the time to watch, just because it will give you plenty to think about the next time you are walking around a public place (like a movie store).
My Grade: 5 stars out of a possible 5.