CONTAGION

This movie should be listed under When Multiple Points of View Don't Work:

CONTAGION



I give it a C+. There was one annoying character, a woman on the Let's Figure Out What To Do About This Disease committee (a CDC employee?) who was SUCH a PIA and so obnoxious that I prayed throughout the whole movie that she'd catch the PigBat disease. If I'd been allowed to her see convulsing and frothing at the mouth, I'd have happily elevated this movie to a B.

Like THE DEBT, this was another plot-driven film with little or no attention given to character development. You've probably deduced by now that I don't care for plot-driven movies. But the real reason it gets a C+ is because, after a strong beginning, the movie lagged. More than once I'd find myself thinking I hope something happens pretty soon. Then something would happen. Yay. Then it would lag again. If you're going to rely on PLOT, then by all means make the PLOT holds people's attention. The techno-babble bored me, I'm a nurse, for pete's sake.

I can't complain (for once) about the medical scenes. I thought, unlike 99.9% of others, these were very well done, although doctors don't generally stand in the middle of the hall and tell someone their loved ones have died. I let that one slide.

(By the way, did anyone who didn't know Matt Damon was in this film actually recognize Matt Damon? I didn't. He looks heavier in the movie, and--because he had nothing to smile about--his teeth didn't give him away. When I got home my husband was watching THE BOURNE IDENTITY and I thought, oh yeah--that's Matt Damon. To me, it's actually a plus when I don't recognize the actors).

So you've got a bunch of characters running around, either coming down with the disease or trying to stop the disease, and not nearly enough time spent on each one. And although this might sounds mean and shallow, all those incredibly close close-ups of Laurence Fishburn's complexion were extremely distracting. Hello! Makeup department? Can you do nothing for this man?

Finally, I was extremely ticked off because they never showed what happened to Marion Cotillard's character at the end. The best character? Jude Law, a rogue blogger with hideous (and so obviously prosthetic) teeth. He was awesome!

P.S. Best line in the movie: "Blogging is graffiti with punctuation." :)