Contagion

Movie Review

Infectious thriller: In ‘Contagion,’ a star-studded cast races to stop the spread of a deadly virus

September 09, 2011|By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff

From left: Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Laurence Fisburne, and… (Photos by Claudette Barius/Warner…)

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CONTAGION

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Written by: Scott Z. Burns

Starring: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, and Gwyneth Paltrow

At: Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs, Jordan’s IMAX

in Reading

Running time: 108 minutes

R (some language, widespread panic, and disturbing images, including the surgical removing of an Oscar winner’s scalp)

Steven Soderbergh has said that he’s a movie or two away from retirement. He’s only 48, but he wants to paint. This sounds serious, and even if he’s only half-kidding, it raises a major question. Do we want to continue to support an industry that bores an entertainer with as much to offer as Soderbergh?

It’s true that what he offers tends to run wider than it runs deep, but addictive contraptions like “Contagion’’ are the sort of gleaming amusements that it’s easy to take for granted even though they come along only when filmmakers like Soderbergh, Christopher Nolan, and, to some extent, David Fincher, make them.

As a filmmaker Soderbergh requires nothing more of us than a willingness to enjoy ourselves. He had fun. Why shouldn’t we? With “Contagion,’’ the fun begins with a cough. A black screen cuts to the words “Day 2’’ and Gwyneth Paltrow’s raw-looking visage. She’s a businesswoman hacking her way through a romantic phone call in a Chicago airport. Not much later, she’s back home in Minnesota with her husband, Mitch (Matt Damon), and son, looking like death. She had been whooping it up with clients in a Hong Kong casino. Now, she’s just whooping and foaming at the mouth. The news at the hospital isn’t good, and eventually the news on the news is worse. Lots of people in lots of cities are dying of something - it’s not SARS, H1N1, or bird flu.