Contagion

Genre: Drama // Running Time: 106 minutes // Release Date: September 9, 2011
Cast & Crew at IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/

Overall Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Synopsis: Pretty straight forward here, it's a movie centered around the outbreak of an unknown and deadly virus that quickly escalates to an epidemic threatening to destroy civilization as we know it.

First of all, this movie has a large and excellent cast, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, as well as a few other notable actors and actresses. It is also directed wonderfully by Stephen Soderbergh. And secondly, for being a movie about a virus and the battle to identify and hopefully cure it, they keep the technical science and associated vocabulary to a minimum. And in the rare moments where they are forced to be a bit technical, they explain things clearly enough for most 5th graders to understand.

I really enjoyed this movie because it was fast-paced and worked hard to keep me involved in the story and caring about multiple characters all the while wondering about different potential side plots, cover-ups, and conspiracies. Soderbergh does an excellent job throwing in elements of government conspiracy, big business pharmaceutical cover ups, and gives you a pretty realistic look at what would happen in our society if an event like this were to occur, without focusing on any one element for too long. I was also struck by the idea that this movie would fit pretty nicely in the middle of Will Smith's 'I Am Legend'. In that movie they show the beginning of a viral epidemic and then fast forward to the future where it's pretty much just Will and his dog, and it seems to me, that this movie could fill the middle part of that movie pretty well.

However, all personal sidetracking aside, this movie is a pretty good watch. It's got a good pace to keep you interested, great acting, and it's well within the realm of something that could actually happen, which makes it a bit frightening. So much so, that when I finished watching it, I felt compelled to go wash my hands and add hand sanitizer to my shopping list.

It also has a great quote about blogs, which is perfect to post on a blog: "Blogging is not writing, it's just graffiti with punctuation!"