The excessively prolific Soderbergh assembles a cast of the biggest box-office draws from Winslet to Damon for a sort of hybrid between
Outbreak and
Babel, with the events jumping from country to country with those location headings so beloved of disaster films. Basically, there's an unidentified virus from Asia spreading like wildfire and civil order soon falls apart as the pandemic takes hold. In line with contemporary catastrophe flick orthodoxy, the authorities are accused of being in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry when a universally available cure fails to materialise.
On one hand, it's nice that
Contagion goes easy on the pseudoscience and heavy on fatalism, including killing off a fair few of its stars with little warning. On the other, it's criminal how little tension is generated, with some of the storylines just superfluous and a good deal of the acting no more than going through the motions.
5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment