review by Michael Mackenzie Pro
Contagion 2011
Watched Jun 23, 2012
Michael Mackenzie’s review:
An impressive cast is wasted in a completely unremarkable disaster movie about a lethal virus. Barring the ugly, cheap-looking photography, it's competently made, but it doesn't seem to have a single original idea in its 106 minute running time, and it doesn't reach a conclusion so much as simply stop when it runs out of steam. Too many characters, none of whom are given any real depth, with only the storyline involving Matt Damon and his daughter registering any real emotion. Decidedly throwaway.
Surely the aim of this film is to show, mechanically at least if not *entirely realistically* how such a thing could escalate and be tackled? In that regard it does fantastically well. It's kind of a documentary in that regard, even allowing for the dramatic interpretation. Looked at as that, and even taking onboard the comments you make it's still worthy of a 4 here.
That may well have been the intention, but there was, in my opinion, a distinct lack of human drama, which made it very hard for me to care about what was going on, even from a "What if?" perspective. I thought PERFECT SENSE, which I watched a few nights ago and also dealt with an epidemic scenario, was the far more effective film of the two - smaller in scope but far better as a result, because it actually gave you characters rather than the 2D puppets on show here.
Haven't seen Perfect Sense - will try and check it out, thanks. I didn't need anything more to appreciate this film. I guess for me the mechanics of the what if scenario was what I wanted from the film and got in abundance.