Soderbergh's Contagion not so contagious

I like Soderbergh; I do. I don't know why. He's awful. I mean his cinematography? Phhbt! He makes documentaries in narrative, barely. But he knows how to get A-list actors to jump on his bandwagon, and surprisingly, although it is for show and publicity, it works. He did it in Ocean's Eleven; he did it in Traffic; and he did it in Out of Sight; he's been doing it forever. And it works. Okay, I'll be honest, I love his two-part biopic Che starring Benicio Del Toro, the one living and currently active actor that makes me proud to be half-Puerto Rican. Martin Scorsese makes me very proud to be half-Italian. But here's the thing: Che was a great film, one of those films that you knew would NEVER get done if not for the driven commitment of a visionary--and that was Soderbergh. Che also proved that his documentary-style can work when the right elements are in place. So he CAN do it; he just needs to understand when it's going to be effective. Contagion was not.

Great performances, by the way. Very even keel. Laurence Fishburne, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kate Winslet. All very professional; all well and good. But so what?! Where is the story, man? It plays the way it reads, like an article in any respectable magazine. Contagion is about what could very well happen if we had another outbreak like SARS or the bird flu blow up into a worldwide pandemic. That's it. It didn't get further developed than that. It started out ominously enough; I thought I was in for something BIG. The momentum built up to a looming crisis of monumental proportions. But then it was like the ending to every Shakespeare play: Soderbergh said, "I give up. I don't know what comes next. All these story arcs, all this character development. Let's just wrap it up with a big bow on top. After all, we don't really want people thinking this will happen." Hmm, come on, man, you've come a long way already in your career. Take a risk. If that's the case I much rather see over-the-top films where everything goes to hell and we're fighting for our dear life against zombies. Because you know what? That's most likely what WILL happen!

BOTTOM LINE: If you want a conscientious thriller wrapped up with a happy ending so you won't go paranoid and buy gallons of hand sanitizer and stock up on canned foods, watch this. But if you missed it, you didn't miss much. Class-act performances for the sake of class-act performances are not enough to give a compartmentalized film replay value.