Contagion (2011)
A Mini Movie Review by Dave Randal
Plot: A thriller centered on the threat posed by a deadly disease and an
international team of doctors contracted by the CDC to deal with the
outbreak.
A movie has to try pretty hard to be overly political for me to call it propaganda. Contagion does exactly that. I won't say that it is in your face because most of the movie is very subtle. Near the end though it gets pretty obvious that the filmmakers are trashing any bloggers who question the safety standards when it comes to vaccines.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a believer in vaccines and think they are essential for a healthy society. At the same time though just about every other person I've known who has gotten a flu shot has had a bad reaction to it. That doesn't mean that there is some big government conspiracy around vaccines, but people should at least be aware that you can not sue a pharmaceutical company if you do have a bad reaction to a vaccine thanks to the government.
This movie is really slow and it doesn't get to it's point until almost the very end. For most of the movie I was pretty bored. In some ways it reminded me of Independence Day (1996) in that they show a lot of different characters and sub-plots. That is about the only thing Contagion has in common with it though. Independence Day is a goofy dated movie, but I sure do have fun every time I watch it. I could never say that about Contagion. Contagion drags along at a very slow pace and at the end it reveals itself to be a propaganda film by basically saying that you should never question vaccines or the government.
Dave Randal's Rating- 
Thumbs Down
Thumbs Down
Dave Randal's Star Rating- ★½(1½) out of ★★★★★(5)
Good review Dave. It's not perfect, but it's a realistic and honest look at where our world would go if we had an outbreak quite like this. Just an idea though.
ReplyDeleteI agree. The idea of a horrible flu like this is possible and I did like the apocalyptic feel to it. My problem is just that they had a lot if weird political agendas in it and concentrated more on that than the story.
ReplyDeleteI was really hoping that this movie would be as good as Outbreak (1995) but it just wasn't. Of course I haven't seen Outbreak in years so don't hold me to that just in case it doesn't hold up. lol