When Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns to Minneapolis from business in
Hong Kong, what she thought was jet lag takes a virulent turn. Two days later,
she's dead in the ER and the doctors tell her shocked and grieving husband (Matt
Damon) they have no idea why.Soon, others exhibit the same mysterious symptoms:
hacking coughs and fever, followed by seizure, brain hemorrhage...and
ultimately, death. In Minneapolis, Chicago, London, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong,
the numbers quickly multiply: one case becomes four, then sixteen, then
hundreds, thousands, as the contagion sweeps across all borders, fueled by the
countless human interactions that make up the course of an average day. A global
pandemic explodes.
I really enjoyed this movie. Movies like this about mass panic, if done
right, are always entertaining and make you wonder what if. This was more of an
artistic and political look at a global epidemic. It included doubting what the
government says, questioning the integrity of the internet and how debilitating
red tape can be in regards to simply doing what is right or what is necessary.
The characters were all well developed and the whole thing seemed very
realistic. The only knock that I would make against this movie would be that it
ended more artistic with the life will go on line of thinking in a pretty mushy
way instead of a pretty little bow. Then they actually showed you just how
simply the whole thing started. That to me was more terrifying than anything.
I would definitely recommend people checking this out. Again, don't have
your expectations too high because it's not the pretty little package that you
would expect. I really liked it though.
