In the cinema: CONTAGION

In a day and age that's ripe with paranoia about germs and illness, CONTAGION comes out to make you concerned about every cough you hear and question everything you touch publicly, even those nuts at the bar.

The movie starts at day two of the CONTAGION. Beth Emhoff departs Hong Kong from a ground breaking of her company's latest asset. Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow) is patient one of a new virus: a combination of bat and swine flu that's so aggressive that she starts a pandemic. She dies within about the first 10 minutes of the movie. The next TWO LONG HOURS is about the various governments trying to deal with it.

The movie has a great cast, but it seemed they were trying too hard to use them all. As a result the movie was very long, and felt every minute of it. Then they have everything you would expect to inspire paranoia, and this is a conspiracy theorists wet dreams. All that combined left the movie a little dry. It felt more like a documentary than entertainment.

All in all, I wish I didn't waste theater time going to see this. It would've been better to see at home so I could pause it and go to the bathroom or grab some snacks. It's headed out of the theaters already, so you likely won't fall in the trap, but you might even reconsider getting it on DVD.

More on IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/