This movie was horrible. No plot, absolutely no character development what so ever. Felt like I was watching an informative video put out by the CDC or WHO.

Didn't this movie come out in 1995 but was then called 'Outbreak' and starred Dustin Hoffman...????

yea I thought the same exact thing when I first heard of it awhile back This just seems to be like the "edgier" version and with an even better cast (though as good as Outbreak's ensemble was).

Gotta hand it to Soderbergh though, talk about not being pigeonholed, he's really been all over the damn map for the better part of the last decade now as far as the content and tone of the films he's made. Including making that massive 2 part biopic of Che Guevera with Benecio that I think maybe 17 people in total actually saw.

This is by no means edgier than Outbreak. It jumped all over the place but without fully developing any one of the characters. Just a bunch of big name actors hanging out together for a while to put together a piece of crap and make money off of there names.

My girl and I chose to see Apollo 18 over Columbiana, then this over Columbiana. Not sure if that means Columbiana will be crappy or it's what we should have seen all along.

I expected alot more chaos and anarchy, a la The Road. Some looting here and there, that's about it. Unusual calmness throughout which bugged me.

Many people where shocked and depressed by how realistic the end of the world of The Road was. People don't want dread and depressing apocalypse, the same way they don't want full retards.

You are right in that the average audience is made of people who want to be totally coddled.

It made about 40 million dollars worldwide. A financial failure, considering the budget was like 60 million, but still, let's not lose perspective. Pretty big audience.

Uh, this was excellent.

Elaborate?

I haven't seen it, but it is Sodebergh, so it can't be that bad.

pretty lameduck ala self serious csi kind of attitude but without the conviction

This was pretty good. Very tense first hour or so, and it thinned a bit towards the end. Well acted, and if there was a character that was developed, it was the disease itself. This movie was about the disease and the epidemic and aspects of how various institutions react.

saw this today. a couple lingering questions

Spoiler: show

Where exactly did Jude Law get the "cure" that he was really advocating? I can't seem to recall if they ever explain that.

and well, this isn't really a question, just a comment to say I wound up kinda disappointed in Marion Cotillard's character, that in the end being told by her official friend that the vaccine batch he gave to the kidnappers was fake, she walks away in disgust. They absolutely deserved to have that happen to them, and frankly I don't even care that there were women and children in that village, but there's no fucking way I would've so easily cow towed to this group of men who wanted to cheat to the front of the line by kidnapping her. In fact, if I was in her shoes, I'd like to think I would've had the guts to say just right off the bat to say fuck off, no I'm not even going to let my people TRY to make a deal with you to get me back, there's no way I'm helping you. But I can be an incredibly stubborn person who would rather fuck up myself in some way rather than live with my hand being forced

My parents liked it!

I loved Outbreak. I was 16, but I loved it.

A big difference in Outbreak that I can think of was that was approached in more of a thriller style and with everyone really concentrating on the finding of exactly where the disease started, like tracking down the actual animal(s). Contagion is more about the public panic and the CDC trying to develop the vaccine.


As much as I enjoyed it overall more than Rebar, I think I do have to agree that in many areas there's little to no character development, and I suppose this is always a main danger when doing a big ensemble film. I'd say easily the most developed of the main leads were Matt Damon's and Laurence Fishburn's character. Marion Cotillard wasn't hardly at all, and Kate Winslet's somewhere in between (though honestly I was just happy to see her, she's easily my favorite actress).