Movie Review: Contagion

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At one point in time, if you wanted to travel the world, it took a lot of time and a lot of effort. Heck, It used to be that if you wanted to fly the China Clipper from San Francisco to Honolulu, there were about 25 people on the plane and about 17-20 hours in the air. Today, the same flight is about 5-6 hours and a flight from Honolulu can reach all the way to Newark, New Jersey in just 11 hours and in both cases the planes can hold around 250 people. The point the movie Contagion is making is that with the mobility of people today, if a highly infectious and deadly disease with a short gestation period ever occurred, it would truly be horrifying as the disease left deadly pockets of destruction across the globe.

The movie begins with Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) coughing and Day 2 appearing on the bottom of the screen. She's on her way home from Hong Kong. Shortly after having arrived at a place of safety back with her family, she has seizures, is rushed to the hospital by her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) where she dies. Don't get mad at The Movie Monkey for revealing this, it's all over the previews so it's no big secret. What was surprising is just how quickly this major Hollywood star was killed off. That doesn't happen too often.

The clock is ticking. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Heath Organization are made aware of people who have died at several locatiosn across the globe. CDC head Dr Cheevers (Laurence Fishburne) sends investigator Dr Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) to investigate Beth's death while the WHO dispatches Dr Leonora Orantes (Marion Cortiland) to Hong Kong to try to locate the initial infection point. Back in San Francisco a conspiracy theorist Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) discovers a video of a man in Japan who dies on a bus and attempts to sound an alarm. Up front, no one believes him. As the days pass from the initial contamination, the body count starts rising. The conspiracies run wilder, the doctors and scientists keep working to find a solution. Some people get sick and survive, some are immune but the death toll goes higher and higher.

There are parallels to what the world experienced back in 2009 with the outbreak of the H1N1 virus. Contagion takes it a step further with a deeper "What if". What if the components of the outbreak because more time restrictive, the potency of the virus was ratcheted up, and the method of transmission was even easier? You sit in your seat for 105 minutes squirming as you watch human nature take over. People want to hug and kiss but doing so may transmit the disease. Government works to find solutions but fears of creating panic before the full information is available hinder dissemination to the public. First responders either knowingly or unknowingly putting their own lives on the line. They just know they are attempting to help someone in need. News organizations are not sure which information to distribute, those from the government or from other organizations who may have details that are contradictory in nature. Individuals across the board are trying to keep their reputations and integrity intact when faced with overwhelming circumstances.

What makes this movie work is the slow build of the fear. How do you protect yourself from something that you can't see without a microscope? Do you protect yourself? How do you guard those you care about? How far do you go to safeguard your own and what lengths to shield others? How do you distinguish truth from propaganda? Short of aliens coming down and blowing up planet Earth, the body count is high, even higher than the 1918 pandemic of the Spanish Flu. With the disturbing images and strong language, the picture was rated PG-13. When the movie is over, you'll be breathing a big sigh of relief, but remember, if the MEV-1 virus actually existed, that single exhale could be deadly to someone else.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: Hereafter

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Another weekend with lots of movie choices due to the Hawaii International Film Festival but due to working so many volunteer shifts, time has been limited. The only full program I saw was Short Program #3 which of the five shorts showed, Table 7 was the most entertaining. And I got to sit in on about 40 minutes of Old Damien Road which talked about the Hanson Disease patients on the island of Molokai. The anime movie, Welcome to the Space Show will be probably the one other HIFF film I'll see this fall showcase. When we go to the movie theater, what are we after? We're here after a good movie! Unfortunately, Hereafter was not what we were here after.

I don't know what got into Clint Eastwood. He's given us wonderful movies like Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, Flag of our Fathers and Grand Torino; all are excellent films. Then he gives us Hereafter. It's the story of three people and their connection to death. After watching this film, you'll join their connection with this film that would bore you to death.

The first person we meet is Cecile de France who plays Marie LeLay, a french journalist who happens to get caught in a giant tsunami wave and sees the proverbial white light and then comes back to join the world of the living. They didn't mention specifically and even though the location looked like Maui to me (it was), they wanted to make it look like an area that was caught in the horrific December 26, 2004 tsunami that ravaged and devastated South East Asia.

The second person is Matt Damon's big role as George Lonegan, a psychic who can make a connection with the dead via a touch to a living person. He's the real deal as they show other frauds who tarnish the reputation of psychics across the globe! He's had enough of dealing with the dead but his brother Billy (Jay Mohr) thinks that he should rake in the bucks by doing readings for those that want to communicate with the departed.

The last are the 12 year old twin brothers Marcus and Jacob (George and Frankie McLaren). Jacob is 12 minutes older than Marcus and is unexpectedly taken into the hereafter. Marcus is searching for meaning to his brother's death when he almost falls victim to an event that happened in England in 2005.

Eastwood sets up a time frame for the movie with these two major events. Because of the mature thematic elements including disturbing disaster and accident images, and for brief strong language, the movie was rated PG-13. The time line in the movie is very deliberately set out but at 129 minutes, it could have and should have been trimmed down.

Many of the visual pulled you into the story, but then you got pushed back by the plodding of the plot. The set up didn't give you the pay out that you would have hoped. As you watched the tsunami happen on screen, there wasn't a sense of urgency or true helpless conveyed as we watched. Yells and screams for help or fear or anguish were absent. The same with Marcus' close call.

The plot was so slow moving that a guy in the row behind me fell asleep and started snoring. LOUDLY! The guy in my row sitting in front of the snorer woke him up not once, but twice during the course of the movie. Then Mr Alarm Clock took a call on his iphone and left the theater. He wasn't there to wake up Mr Snore Machine a third time and we spent the last 15 minutes of the movie hearing logs being sawed over the soundtrack.

Eventually the paths of the three end up crossing, but by this time who cared. There was no emotional investment in Marie, George or Marcus. When the movie ended there seemed to be a big collective yawn come from the theater. This would seem to indicate that the longevity of this movie is going to move very quickly into the hereafter. And in case you want to cure your case of insomnia and don't want to head to the theater, go to the official web site of Hereafter at http://hereafter.warnerbros.com and click SKIP for viewing the trailer. Make sure your speakers are on. When the main page comes up, I think you'll agree that music like this would cause a visit from the sandman so that you too can sound like you are sawing logs!

The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.