“CONTAGION” WORTH CATCHING

CONTAGION

Starring Matt Damon,

Kate Winslet,

Gwyneth Paltrow,

Laurence Fishburne,

Jude Law

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Written by Scott Z. Burns

Running time 105 mins.

Rated PG-13

          It almost feels more like a documentary. What an amazing film that can feature such big-name talent and still seem disturbingly real.

          Upshot: Pandemic.

          The lack of story-ness with this movie is incredible. As is the fact that it still works. “The Stand,” for example, with its wide array of characters and ultimate showdown of good versus evil is all story. But “Contagion” is much more spare. The characters are there, just far more subtly shown.

          What grabs our interest by the throat is the grim progression of a strange fatal illness spreading at exponential rate across the globe. We might see a person coughing touch a glass, then see a waiter pick up the glass, then wipe his eye, and suck on his finger for awhile, then rub it around on the glass some more and do it all again. That sort of thing. All just very simple, very real. It’s not the kind of movie that uses CG effects to zoom in on and spin all around a microbe going down somebody’s gullet.

          Central characters include Matt Damon as an average joe whose wife (Paltrow) comes back from a trip not feeling well, and Kate Winslet as a CDC doctor. As the disease quickly spreads, much of the film focuses on the CDC’s attempts to find out where the disease started and determine how to respond.

          As the response gets underway, we see who benefits first and who doesn’t. Voices raised, windows broken, lots of mass commuters with surgical masks.

          The effort to isolate the cause of the disease assumes proportions reminding us of “Citizen Kane” and the quest to find the meaning of “Rosebud.” And this aspect of story-ness does not, I think, work in the film’s favor. Seems too much like scapegoating, and sort of the opposite of factual, particularly knowing what we do about Mad Cow and other diseases resulting from industrialized farming.

          Not the big cinematic upper. (Pandemic.) Don’t expect to see Matt Damon rolling off of car hoods blasting shotguns at the zombie-like diseased. You may be familiar with Steven Soderbergh’s critically-acclaimed “Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich,” and the three “Ocean’s” movies. I still haven’t seen “The Informant!” but I think “Contagion” is Soderbergh’s best movie so far.               Well, nothing to sneeze at, anyway.