Eye Candy #570 - "Contagion"

Contagion:  This Steven Soderbergh-helmed ensemble piece plays more like a thriller than a medical drama.  A young woman (played very briefly by Gywneth Paltrow) becomes infected with a virulent plague in Hong Kong and travels back to the United States where the virus runs rampant, killing quickly with a 25% mortality rate.  Her husband (Matt Damon) has to save the remaining member of his family as society in his home city of Minneapolis as well as around the world begins to descend into anarchy and human contact can kill.  Laurence Fishburne is a doctor at the CDC leading a team tasked with finding the source, make-up, and cure for the virus, and whether or not the increasing pandemic is a terrorist attack or more natural in origin, all while tap-dancing around the inherent politics of the situation across various nations. Spanning the globe, the film follows the efforts of survivors, of government personnel looking for a cure, and those seeking to take advantage of situation for personal gain.  As you can tell, it’s busy, busy, busy.  Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, and Jude Law co-star here.  Structurally very similar to Soderbergh’s “Traffic”, he deftly juggles multiple story lines all happening simultaneously, as well as making a 106 minute movie just fly by.  The cast is uniformly good, the film is technically solid, and the points driven home by the movie are extremely timely.  Hand sanitizer sales should go through the roof.  Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”