Some friends and I saw Contagion last night. I have felt the urge to ramble about it a little bit. I have been wanting to see this film for months and the trailers looked amazing. My buddy Alex Justinger worked on the trailer and he and his crew did a great job on it.I happen to love Steven Soderbergh as a Director and the cast was completely stacked with amazing actors. I'm not gonna list them all here, but any film with Matt Damon, Lawrence Fishburne and Kate Winslet should be amazing. I just wanted to list all of the reasons that I wanted to see this film and one of the main ones is the subject matter. I've always loved a good outbreak film..ever since, well, "Outbreak".
Spoilers follow: Now we have to snap to the reality of the film. The reality is that the movie looked great, the direction was good and the acting was spot on. The problem with "Contagion" wasn't the pacing or lack of action..I thought the style was great and it was paced decently well. The problem with this film, and yes the hype hurt it, was predictability. I literally knew what part every person played from the second they came into frame. I knew that Eliot Gould's character Dr. Ian Sussman was going to make the breakthrough..I knew Kate Winslet's character Dr. Erin Mears would do her best to contain the disease and then contract it herself. There were several things I liked about the film..I liked the way it counted up by the day since contraction to show how far the virus had spread and I liked the subplot with Lawrence Fishburne's character Dr. Ellis Cheever that included his wife and neighbors. I dunno, I just wanted something to surprise me. This is why I don't like to get excited about movies..I only set myself up for disappointment.
At the end of the film maybe they could have shown the newly mutated virus being contracted by someone with a vaccine bracelet on letting the audience know we are back to square one. I just didn't like the mundane ending with Matt Damon looking at pictures of his wife which caused flashbacks of her getting the virus for the first time.
If you've seen it and agree with me, or think I'm totally off my rocker..feel free to comment, I'd love to get feedback on this film from other people.
-Kyle
www.nextlevelprods.com
