Advertised as an “action thriller,” it’s pretty much neither. Often really glacial, it’s a surprisingly realistic depiction of the outbreak of a particularly nasty virus and the ensuing planetary epidemic. To be honest, the closest movie I’d link this to in terms of style is… “2001.” From what I can tell, the science was quite good. The disease is not sci-fi; the effects of the disease are distressingly realistic, as are the means of transmission and the worldwide panic that spreads.
This is *not* like “28 Day Later” or other pandemic disaster movies. The disease has a 25% mortality rate, and some people are plain immune. The characters are largely pretty realistic… no Action Stars leaping onto burning jetliners to wrest control from zombies or any such dumbass thing. Most of the characters are CDC or WHO staff working to combat the disease… and often enough that means working in a lab over a centrifuge or a slaving away all day over steaming hot rhesus monkey brains.
It’s *not* a date movie. There’s no heroic Save The Day at the end, important characters die, important characters get their asses in trouble with the Feds and will likely go to prison for leaking information, important characters turn out to be scumbags willing to lie to people to get them to buy quack cures. There’s no love story amidst the chaos. There is no real Bad Guy here; even the disease itself is not particularly personified, it’s just a disease to be fought. And not even cured… a partially successful vaccine is the goal. Lots of sitting around in offices or gathering information in the field.
So… on the whole, I liked it. It was an odd little movie, and I expect it won’t do squat in terms of box office (made $23 million opening weekend, budget $60 million). But it was a well-acted and *smart* movie.
One moment that grabbed me: it’s no surprise that Gwyneth Paltrow’s character dies of the disease early on (it’s shown in the trailers). Like ebola, the virus has one good feature… it eats away at your personality while it kills you, so that there’s not much of you “there” at the end. But Paltrow’s character dies with the most appallingly horrific look of stark terror in my recent memory.
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That’s how my Mom looked toward the end when she passed in 2004. She didn’t outlive my Dad four months. Now my neighbor, a woman whose husband left her with a mentally challenged toddler, is eat up with Cancer.