Glad I watched it on demand for $4.95 instead of in a theater. Both of us thought it was obvious and boring. Germs can spread! Look, that person is touching something! Wow, so that’s how that happens.
I also just recently watched this. Admittedly, I was kind of half paying attention towards the end. I thought it dragged on a bit. So, was Jude Law legitimately sick? Who was lying, him or the government?
I loved his character. Anything that might make the average moviegoer think “Huh…so there are people out there who are willing to spread complete bullshit about scientific process and/or the governement just to make a buck?” is fine by me.
He was lying. He was never sick. He made US$4.5M from his lies.
I agree with that sentiment, Hal; I just didn’t like his character. I admit that part of it may be the fact that I don’t like Jude Law. I find him disturbing to look at and a less-than-decent actor.
Seems to me the entire film could have been reduced to a public service announcement. The characters were uninteresting and the story lines ho-hum. And I really can’t stand Elliott Gould. It looked like he and Fishburne were competing to see who would win the ‘king of bloat’ crown.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that movies like this can still get made. Smart, thoughtful, less-is-more, nothing-is-spoonfed kind of film. I had heard little about it and I kept expecting it to degrade into Outbreak hokum crap, but it never did. First thing that I noticed was Paltrow’s genuinely unpleasant and disturbingly realistic seizure and death scenes. Ick! (but in a good way!) Only surpassed with watching her then get her skull sawed off. Double-ick! (but, again).
I also loved how they went against type and had Jude Law’s character turn out to be nothing more than an amoral scumbag money grubbing scam artist. For me he represented every internet 9/11 truther (and consequently I was disappointed that someone didn’t blow his brains out at the end!)
Incredibly ironic for them to use the dumb “…the birds already have” line in ads. The movie was the antithesis of that sort of bad, clunky nonsense.
I forgot to mention something else about the movie. About an hour into it, I suddenly jumped out of my chair, grabbing for the box to check what I already was sure I’d find…
I heard the soundtrack music swell at some point there, and was not surprised to find my suspicion confirmed: Cliff Martinez did the soundtrack. I immediately ordered a copy.
I’ve already got his soundtracks for Solaris and The Limey (two movies that are similarly understated yet totally gripping, IMO) and his work on this film just cements for me that Mr. Martinez is one of the greatest film composers of this modern era. From now on, I include him in the same tier as Giorgio Moroder and John Williams and Bernard Herrmann.
(Plus he did great work years ago for Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Dickies, among others.)
Something else (though it’s more MPSIMS). Throughout the entire film, for some reason, I thought Matt Damon was Mark Wahlberg! I also didn’t understand why they didn’t return to Kate Winslet’s character at the end. I didn’t get that when she was lying on the stretcher trying to give the other patient her coat she died then and there (I guess).
This is an easy mistake to make as they were actually conceived from the same test tube.
Seriously, it seems that a lot of the complaints about the film is that it does not follow the tropes of a conventional thriller. If this is what you walked into the cinema expecting to see, then it is understanding why one would be underwhelmed. However, the accuracy and detail of the film was very impressive, with only a few amplified dramatic elements for the sake of increasing drama. (Staging the character played by Gwynyth Paltrow was done to provide an opportunity for her to spread the disease before getting home, thus complicating the forensic analysis, e.g. whether she conveyed or received the disease from that union.)
For those familiar with the SARS coronavirus of 2003, the film plays out very clearly as a realistic “what could have been” if the epidemic had not been effectively identified and contained, and in fact several of the characters and plot elements of the film are fictionalizations of people and events connected with the SARS epidemic. That kind of realism is far more chilling than any cartoonish villain attempting to hold the world ransom from his volcano lair with the assistance of his ninja army and steel-jawed henchman only to be foiled by a womanizing alcoholic agent of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Stranger
It’s her face, sealed in a plastic makeshift body bag, that we see as the scene of the mass grave opens. This is the cut immediately after the cel phone/jacket scene you describe.
Along with Leonardo DiCaprio?
Seriously, I was very confused watching The Departed.
Oh, ok. Weird, because I thought that was Damon’s daughter’s boyfriend! I thought the flowers the hazmat guy was holding then were the ones he tried to give her earlier.
Ya know, under a plastic bag, Kate Winslet or teenage boy? You make the call! 
…but what about the in-house prom scene at the end? Did you think she moved on super quick?
I spent the entire movie being hypnotized by Jude Law’s fake tooth.
I’m doing this after checking the forum rules. Hopefully this is appropriate.
I just watched this movie for the first time. According to the wikipediapage, Contagion has seen a resurgence of interest since the COVID-19 pandemic arose.
Some parts of this flick are eerily familiar – references to social distancing, R/O , no longer shaking hands, wearing masks, hand sanitizer. The comparison between the homeopathic remedy in the movie and hydroxychloroquine is rather obvious.
The disease in the movie has a much higher mortality rate than COVID-19, and results in 2.5 million dead in the US, and COVID-19 just passed 100,000 dead a few days ago.
Any of you folks who saw this before I did getting a serious deja vu?
You’re not the only one. It’s fun to read the earlier comments in the thread that “it’s boring” and “nothing happens”, but what happens in the movie is pretty much what happened with COVID-19. The last few months have indeed been boring if you’ve been isolated at home; the scene with the stay-at-home prom was one of the few references to home isolation.
It’s probably a better movie now than when it was released.
I saw the movie a few years back and was impressed by it. A couple of months ago, when the numbers for Covid were not yet known (mortality rate especially), it was judged “not a good idea to watch” by family members who made the mistake of seeing it while quarantined. Just too scary and close to reality.