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I updated this blog last fall and I can’t believe it is almost a year. I was meaning to update the blog for some time but my laziness got over me! :(   There is nothing new going on at my end. The same old, same old! We have been watching movies once in a while over the weekends and I am busy updating my other two blogs regularly ;) We watched Contagion last night and thought of reviving this blog with a review.

Contagion is a movie about an airborne virus that spreads rapidly worldwide and turns into a pandemic. It is a mysterious disease, an unknown virus and the medical community around world tries to investigate the origins, characteristics and a vaccine for the disease. The movie started off well showing how the virus spreads and deaths around the world. As the movie progresses, it lost steam. It turned into a slow movie and felt more like a documentary.

contagion,

Source: Wikipedia

The movie has a big lineup of star power but none had a significant role. At least Matt Damon & Gwyneth Paltrow did not have much to do in the movie. Gwyneth Paltrow is the first victim how contracts the disease during a business trip to Hong Kong and dies the very next day she returns the US. Matt Damon is the grieving husband and goes to extraordinary measures to quarantine his daughter from the outside world until she gets vaccinated. The fact that he is immune to this disease, I was expecting a heroic role from him but there was none. I felt his role was rather insignificant, expect for the fact that his wife transported the virus to the United States.

What this movie effectively illustrates is nothing spreads faster than fear and how humans react to the fear of death. The movie does make one ponder how we would react if there was indeed a worldwide pandemic of this magnitude, something 10 or 20 times as contagious and fatal as SARCS. The movie also shows how certain people take advantage of the situation and spread lies for their own benefit, out of greed. At the same time, it also shows how certain people risk their lives to find a vaccine, going to infected areas to investigate the disease and set up emergency shelters and to treat the ill.

Overall, this movie was way below my expectations. I found the movie neither thrilling nor mysterious. I guess the only mystery and suspense in the movie is guessing who and how the vaccine is invented. Although this movie has received great reviews, I feel it is an average movie with a 2.5/5 rating. I saw the regular screening of the movie and after watching it, I do not think it is worth paying extra money to watch it in an IMAX theater.

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