We were looking forward to seeing "Contagion" on PPV and ordered it the first day it was available. The first 15-20 minutes were mesmerizing, then the movie lapsed into mediocrity.
I won't detail the plot, the outstanding cast or the thinly drawn characters, which other reviewers have captured perfectly. In my opinion, there are two major flaws in this film - - each caused by a combination of poor writing and editing - - which prevent the film from being truly engaging and effective.
The first problem is the lack of consistency and rationale in the characters' decision-making. For example, Matt Damon is a grieving father who will do anything to protect his daughter and one surviving family member. He prevents her from opening the door to take flowers from her boyfriend because he doesn't want her to touch anyone or anything from the outside and contract the virus. (The boyfriend has no signs of contagion.) But in the next scene featuring these characters, he has taken his daughter to the grocery store to look for any remaining goods, elbowing away the looters running through the aisles. How do 500 strangers pawing through cereal pose less danger to the daughter than one lovelorn teenager on the other side of a screen door?
The second problem is the introduction of several major characters and plot threads that receive huge emphasis at the beginning of the film, then vanish without explanation or are resolved in a manner devoid of logic. For example, Marion Cotillard plays a WHO representative who is aggressively investigating the origin of the virus and attempting to find a cure. She's kidnapped by a co-worker and taken to his remote village in rural China. Purportedly, the village can only survive the epidemic if she is held hostage and exchanged for rare vials of the vaccine.
This plot line is entirely implausible because:
* No vaccine exists at the time Marion is taken hostage. The kidnappers could not know if & when it would be developed. They also would have no way of knowing that due to the vaccine's composition and the small number of facilities that can manufacture it, the vaccine will be available in extremely limited quantities. Thus, the kidnappers are assigned a motive -- improving the village's position in the waiting list for the vaccine - - that they could not possibly have at the time of the kidnapping.
* When Marion is taken out of her lab to a small village without any research capabilities, she can no longer make progress on finding a cure. Taking her away from her work could significantly delay (if not prevent) the creation of a vaccine and the end of epidemic. Her co- worker would be well aware of this consequence, and this is at complete odds with the kidnappers' goal of saving their neighbors.
* We are expected to believe that in a global epidemic with hundreds of millions dying and governments collapsing, the WHO will pay attention to the demands of one small town and one kidnapped employee (who hasn't been tortured or threatened in any way). But not only does the WHO respond, it coordinates with the U.S. government to put together a sophisticated negotiation team and sends them to an alley in Hong Kong to secure Marion's release. There is simply no way that valuable time and resources would be spent on such a mission.
* Marion is briefly seen at the village teaching a class of small children and sweetly smiling down at them. Later, the WHO pays her "ransom" by delivering a case of purported vaccine to the kidnappers. She is freed and gets into the van with the WHO response team. When they tell her that the syringes actually contained a placebo, she leaps back into the kidnappers' van to return to the village. WHY? Stockholm Syndrome? "Is she in love with her co-worker?" wondered my friend. We don't know, and we never find out, because we never see her again.
In another mishandled plot thread concerning the source of the virus, we are reminded with just a few minutes left in the film that it began on Day 2. We are then presented with a 6-scene montage of Day 1, hand touching sequential hand, tracing Gwyneth's infection back to its origin. The montage is jarring only because it has no connection to the scenes that immediately precede it. Anticlimactic and mind-numbingly predictable, it then "reveals" a source that was explicitly identified by some flat-voiced doctor much earlier in the movie.
Finally, the movie raises a number of ethical questions that all would have benefited from more than superficial exploration. A blogger uses scare tactics and spreads false information about the virus in order to gain media attention. The film merely observes his conduct with detachment, and we remain similarly disengaged. The issue of "who" should receive rare vaccination shots is briefly touched upon, but falls short of meaningful analysis. We had a much more impassioned and thought-provoking debate about the overcrowded lifeboat scenario in my high school sociology course.
"Contagion" has solid production values and some heartfelt attempts by the cast to make the most of their one-dimensional characters. Not dreck, but I am giving it a 4/10 rating primarily because of the numerous and distracting plot flaws. This director and cast, empowered by a phenomenal budget, should have been able to make a substantially better film.
I won't detail the plot, the outstanding cast or the thinly drawn characters, which other reviewers have captured perfectly. In my opinion, there are two major flaws in this film - - each caused by a combination of poor writing and editing - - which prevent the film from being truly engaging and effective.
The first problem is the lack of consistency and rationale in the characters' decision-making. For example, Matt Damon is a grieving father who will do anything to protect his daughter and one surviving family member. He prevents her from opening the door to take flowers from her boyfriend because he doesn't want her to touch anyone or anything from the outside and contract the virus. (The boyfriend has no signs of contagion.) But in the next scene featuring these characters, he has taken his daughter to the grocery store to look for any remaining goods, elbowing away the looters running through the aisles. How do 500 strangers pawing through cereal pose less danger to the daughter than one lovelorn teenager on the other side of a screen door?
The second problem is the introduction of several major characters and plot threads that receive huge emphasis at the beginning of the film, then vanish without explanation or are resolved in a manner devoid of logic. For example, Marion Cotillard plays a WHO representative who is aggressively investigating the origin of the virus and attempting to find a cure. She's kidnapped by a co-worker and taken to his remote village in rural China. Purportedly, the village can only survive the epidemic if she is held hostage and exchanged for rare vials of the vaccine.
This plot line is entirely implausible because:
* No vaccine exists at the time Marion is taken hostage. The kidnappers could not know if & when it would be developed. They also would have no way of knowing that due to the vaccine's composition and the small number of facilities that can manufacture it, the vaccine will be available in extremely limited quantities. Thus, the kidnappers are assigned a motive -- improving the village's position in the waiting list for the vaccine - - that they could not possibly have at the time of the kidnapping.
* When Marion is taken out of her lab to a small village without any research capabilities, she can no longer make progress on finding a cure. Taking her away from her work could significantly delay (if not prevent) the creation of a vaccine and the end of epidemic. Her co- worker would be well aware of this consequence, and this is at complete odds with the kidnappers' goal of saving their neighbors.
* We are expected to believe that in a global epidemic with hundreds of millions dying and governments collapsing, the WHO will pay attention to the demands of one small town and one kidnapped employee (who hasn't been tortured or threatened in any way). But not only does the WHO respond, it coordinates with the U.S. government to put together a sophisticated negotiation team and sends them to an alley in Hong Kong to secure Marion's release. There is simply no way that valuable time and resources would be spent on such a mission.
* Marion is briefly seen at the village teaching a class of small children and sweetly smiling down at them. Later, the WHO pays her "ransom" by delivering a case of purported vaccine to the kidnappers. She is freed and gets into the van with the WHO response team. When they tell her that the syringes actually contained a placebo, she leaps back into the kidnappers' van to return to the village. WHY? Stockholm Syndrome? "Is she in love with her co-worker?" wondered my friend. We don't know, and we never find out, because we never see her again.
In another mishandled plot thread concerning the source of the virus, we are reminded with just a few minutes left in the film that it began on Day 2. We are then presented with a 6-scene montage of Day 1, hand touching sequential hand, tracing Gwyneth's infection back to its origin. The montage is jarring only because it has no connection to the scenes that immediately precede it. Anticlimactic and mind-numbingly predictable, it then "reveals" a source that was explicitly identified by some flat-voiced doctor much earlier in the movie.
Finally, the movie raises a number of ethical questions that all would have benefited from more than superficial exploration. A blogger uses scare tactics and spreads false information about the virus in order to gain media attention. The film merely observes his conduct with detachment, and we remain similarly disengaged. The issue of "who" should receive rare vaccination shots is briefly touched upon, but falls short of meaningful analysis. We had a much more impassioned and thought-provoking debate about the overcrowded lifeboat scenario in my high school sociology course.
"Contagion" has solid production values and some heartfelt attempts by the cast to make the most of their one-dimensional characters. Not dreck, but I am giving it a 4/10 rating primarily because of the numerous and distracting plot flaws. This director and cast, empowered by a phenomenal budget, should have been able to make a substantially better film.