Customer Reviews

Contagion

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Yes, CONTAGION has some really incredulous dialogue and plot holes the size of the Grand Canyon, but for me it was a guilty pleasure. The movie knew how to push all the right emotional buttons; the president was stoically heroic; the virologist heroically sacrificial; the little boy hopelessly cute; the female villain deliciously over the top; and a scenario that although not expertly developed, still frightening in its implications. Bruce Boxleitner in a Bill Clinton impersonation plays the President who is assaulted by a crazed virologist and her partner, and given the Ebola virus, but a different strain that can be deadly even airborne. The President, his aides and a lot of patients are quarantined at an urgent care hospital and the villains demand a hundred million dollars or the president will die. Pretty far-fetched at times, but the scriptwriters knew enough to make us feel the tragedy of some of the deaths, but the Secret Service agents are refreshingly heroic and believable, even if the over the top general out to be president, is too incredible to be convincing. Jeffrey Combs of REANIMATOR fame adopts a combination Polish/Irish accent, but it's good to see this unusual actor at work; Lin Shaye is demonic as the scorned Dr. Crowley; and Megan Gallagher is convincing as the virologist. The pace is appropriate, and despite its many implausibilities, I found myself involved in the film.

The major danger to most of the world's citizens are malevolent or destructive acts by governments. Wars, concentration camps, etc. This flick is about the exact opposite thing: Government workers (the CDC mainly) are saving people from a malevolent virus-based plague. This has, of course, never happened, but who knows?

There is no real plot here except 1) there is a virus-based plague; and 2) the Government swings into action to find a cure. Then society starts to break down (which has never happened in modern times in response to a plague, but who knows?)...

There are some big named stars in this flick, but mostly the film is an infomercial about how lucky we are to have Government researchers standing around at taxpayer expense to cure Bird Flu or some other plague that might happen some day but never has. Not much room left for acting or drama. The only romantic angle to this movie sees a sordid cheating Gwyneth Paltrow get killed off in grisly fashion in the first ten minutes to the chagrin of Matt Damon, her cuckolded but loving husband. Pretty grim stuff.

This is a watchable movie because someone plowed a lot of money into it. If you like to be scared by hyped-up non threats like Bird Flu, Global Warming, etc. then this film is for you. RJB.

found this a pretty good break from the slasher and space movies. Recommend those liking quarantine and isolation flicks to buy this. Was a good purchase.

An incoherent plot, a predictable ending, a shoddy script, and terrible acting are the symptoms of this - a hopelessly cliched movie about a demented doctor and her sidekick plotting to release an previously-unknown (yeah, right) strain of Ebola into the general population (which just happens to have mutated its DNA to become airborne - no Ebola virus has, in fact, ever done this - or ever will).

It starts with the president getting shot with a dart containing the Ebola strain, and ends with the cure being found by a brilliant, attractive doctor (who just happens to have fallen for the president) in the nick of time, before the quarantined hospital (and possibly about five miles around - not to mention the large area affected by radioactive fallout and permanently-altered weather patterns...) is destroyed by a 60 kiloton 'inversion' (a new type of bomb, or just a cheap gimmick to explain away the disctinct lack of actual research that went into the making of this movie?) bomb.

Firstly, would any president actually order a 60 KT nuclear weapon to be detonated on US soil, for whatever reason? Possibly not. Secondly, if the Ebola strain had never been seen before, it seems just a little bit too much of a coincidence that in the exact same hospital is a kid who happends to have contracted the exact same strain of Ebola in Africa - meaning enough vaccine can be synthesised from his blood to save everyone. Hmmm... Thirdly, it seems as if the only thing protecting the US from a biological terrorist attack is the president, the army (headed by a general who seems to hate his commander-in-chief - at least, until the end of the movie, when the two make their peace in the true spirit of American heroism), and the Secret Service, who actually can't even search the hospital where the presdient has been quarantined (allowing the insane doctor who created the virus to set up base in the basement). Oh well, maybe the CDC, FEMA, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, Pentagon, Vice President, police, Office of Emergency Planning, or anyone else, just aren't equipped to deal with this sort of thing...

In a word: absolute trash, a made-for-TV movie that seems to have been produced with a $10 budget and written by someone who had not idea about what they were writing, or how to actually write a (half-decent) movie. Give this one a miss - trust me.