DVDFile

Warner / 105 Minutes / 2011 / Rated PG-13 / Street Date: January 3, 2012

Steven Soderbergh remains one of Hollywood's most overrated big-budget filmmaking sycophants, but in Contagion he proves that knows his audience pretty damned well. When Gwyneth Paltrow kicks the bucket in his tale of bugs and microbes and mega-plague (oh yeah - SPOILER ALERT!), it's one of the most rivetingly rewarding filmmaking moments of 2011. I have no ill will toward miss G., but watching a major movie star deliver a seriously gripping death gasp only to follow said incident with a wincingly gross brain autopsy turns out to be a particularly satisfying experience.

It may sound perverse or depraved, but Hollywood has always allowed viewers an outlet to journey out beyond our comfort levels, to take a particular pleasure in watching familiar faces befall heinous fictional endeavors because we know that once a movie's end credits start to roll that no one actually did those things. Look at our collective interest in weepy melodramas (that always hinge on multiple broken hearts and often gunplay) or slasher movies: A movie audience likes a good release, and I Soderbergh recognizes this with Contagion.

The movie itself is bloated and never intrinsically compelling, but its top-tier cast and effectively paranoid story structure is enough to make anyone want to grab some Purell. Soderbergh gets a little big for his britches as he attempts to mirror the inception and spread of the movie's central virus with a dissertation on the state of modern cronyist politics and how a pandemic would be exacerbated by inefficient and corrupt political mumbo jumbo, but Contagion is for the most part a straightforward freak-out of a movie, and that's where it comes to life.

And no one puts together an ensemble quite like a Soderbergh joint. Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Gwyneth - the director purposely never gives any of them particularly histrionic scenes (there are no 'Oscar moments' here), but they're all more than up to the task. Contagion is by no means a major work, but it's short, to-the-point fun.

And seriously: The Gwyneth death scene. Give it a shot. You won't regret it.