CONTAGION - ****

UK release date 21st October 2011 - 12A

Gwyneth Paltrow as the Typhoid Mary of a killer virus threatening to wipe out mankind? Count me in! Especially as director Steven Soderbergh includes a great scene where a dummy of Gwyneth’s head has its scalp peeled back in a post mortem autopsy. Now that’s what I call giving the public what they want. Aside from that must-see gem this superbly written (by BOURNE ULTIMATUM’s Scott Z Burns) compelling ‘ticking clock’ thriller is an absolute blast. Raising questions about what might happen on both personal and global levels if an unknown and quickly replicating deadly disease – think Bird Flu or SARS – becomes pandemic in record time, you should catch CONTAGION fast. Because it grounds the typical old school Irwin Allen style disaster movie template – multiple story strands, startling visuals, and who in the starry cast will get killed? – in an epic ultra-realism that pays intimately drawn dividends. Frightening on visceral and intellectual fronts because it feels so plausible in this era of super-bugs and biological weaponry, Soderbergh’s infectious medical menacer/faux sci-fi fable is slickly constructed and streamlined to virtual perfection.

Beginning on Day 2 of the mysterious epidemic – the Day 1 explanation is saved until last – businesswoman Beth Emhoff (Paltrow) returns from Hong Kong with a hacking cough feeling awful. Two days later she’s dead and her shocked husband Mitch (Matt Damon) is quarantined until some explanation can be found. As same case scenarios appear everywhere between Minneapolis and Tokyo, showing how easily communicable such a disease is in the international climate, Deputy Director Cheever (so that’s why he left CSI, Laurence Fishburne) at the US Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention sends in Doctor Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) to investigate while trying to allay media panic. 

How cynical activist blogger Alan Krumwiede (wonky-toothed Jude Law) and kidnapped World Health Organization head honcho Leonora Orantes (Marion Cottilard who has ‘No Regrets’ again) fits in to the paranoia arc and potential vaccine thread is something you must find out for yourselves. CONTAGION sports my favourite line of dialogue so far this year – scientist Elliot Gould screaming at Law, “Blogging isn’t writing, it’s just graffiti with punctuation!” And the score by Cliff Martinez is exceptional, making this former Captain Beefheart drummer the composer of the year what with this and DRIVE in his current CV. OK, CONTAGION isn’t big on CGI special effects nor is it driven by such tent pole distractions as massive car chases or explosive firepower. Thankfully. It’s a very cool, calm, collected and chilling ‘what if’ scenario that never lets up in intensity and is all the more satisfying for its admirably low-tech aspirations.

Alan Jones