Contagion (2003)

One of a contagion of bad movies...

An incoherent plot, a predictable ending, a shoddy script, and terrible acting are the symptoms of this - a hopelessly cliched movie about a demented doctor and her sidekick plotting to release an previously-unknown (yeah, right) strain of Ebola into the general population (which just happens to have mutated its DNA to become airborne - no Ebola virus has, in fact, ever done this - or ever will).

It starts with the president getting shot with a dart containing the Ebola strain, and ends with the cure being found by a brilliant, attractive doctor (who just happens to have fallen for the president) in the nick of time, before the quarantined hospital (and possibly about five miles around - not to mention the large area affected by radioactive fallout and permanently-altered weather patterns...) is destroyed by a 60 kiloton 'inversion' (a new type of bomb, or just a cheap gimmick to explain away the disctinct lack of actual research that went into the making of this movie?) bomb.

Firstly, would any president actually order a 60 KT nuclear weapon to be detonated on US soil, for whatever reason? Possibly not. Secondly, if the Ebola strain had never been seen before, it seems just a little bit too much of a coincidence that in the exact same hospital is a kid who happends to have contracted the exact same strain of Ebola in Africa - meaning enough vaccine can be synthesised from his blood to save everyone. Hmmm... Thirdly, it seems as if the only thing protecting the US from a biological terrorist attack is the president, the army (headed by a general who seems to hate his commander-in-chief - at least, until the end of the movie, when the two make their peace in the true spirit of American heroism), and the Secret Service, who actually can't even search the hospital where the presdient has been quarantined (allowing the insane doctor who created the virus to set up base in the basement). Oh well, maybe the CDC, FEMA, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, Pentagon, Vice President, police, Office of Emergency Planning, or anyone else, just aren't equipped to deal with this sort of thing...

In a word: absolute trash, a made-for-TV movie that seems to have been produced with a $10 budget and written by someone who had not idea about what they were writing, or how to actually write a (half-decent) movie. Give this one a miss - trust me. March 27, 2004

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