I’m beginning to think Steven Soderbergh and Matt Damon have a very Johnny Depp and Tim Burton type of relationship…this is disturbing. No, seriously, they usually work pretty well together and produce decent films, Matt Damon with his steely angst, his smart man’s smart man acting, and Soderbergh’s penchant for getting most every A-list actor in recent memory to sign on for one of his grand sprawling opuses usually dealing with polarizing topics such as drugs, espionage, government secrets, or making Andy Garcia’s veins protrude from his forehead as he runs a casino. Ensembles that come together for one common cause is kind of Soderbergh’s thing. And Contagion is no exception.
The list of actors in this intersecting drama looks like an Oscar nominee voters card. Matt Damon and Gwyneth Goop Pants are here as a married couple, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, and Laurence Fishburne play doctor/scientists. Jude Law appears looking frantic, and for good measure Bryan Cranston and Elliot Gould show up in what appears to be a germaphobe’s worst nightmare.
There’s no amount of Purell or Bleach that will make watching the trailer count down all the ways you come into contact with nefarious germ blobs and then manage to slather all the bacteria into all your orifices…JUST ALL OF THEM any better! Then just before some sort of swine flu/bird flu/Ebola epidemic takes hold of the nation, we get to watch as Gwyneth Paltrow ruins humanity with her runny nose…that is after she craps out. The rest of the movie looks like fallout from Ground Zero Paltrow, and how the world swiftly descends into an evacuated, virus-ravaged hell-topia. So basically Contagion wishes everyone a happy cold and flu season!
Yikes.
