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Contagion (2011) - Movie Review

Where to Watch: Netflix 

Alternatively, you can rent this movie in HD for ₹120 or buy it in HD for ₹590 either on "Google Play Movies & TV" or on "YouTube".

TED is a non-profit organization where people from around the globe deliver thought-provoking ideas. All you have to do is to go to YouTube and watch it for free. One video that became very popular early this year was a TED video of Bill Gates titled "The next outbreak? We’re not ready". In that video, there is a mention of a movie called ''Contagion'' featuring a stellar cast.

Contagion is directed by Steven Soderbergh. The movie starts by showing a female character who had gone to Hong Kong for a business trip return back to Minneapolis. Later she has a seizure and eventually dies while at the hospital of unknown causes. Now whatever happens later in this movie has an uncanny resemblance to how "COVID-19" is wreaking havoc. There is a mention in the movie that ''the virus is a combination of the genetic material of pig and bat-borne viruses'' and I will leave it at that. 

Even though this movie had an interesting premise, I felt the film lost steam after a good start and did not deliver the excitement that it could have. There was very little character development, you do not feel for whatever happens to the characters and everything just looks too good to be true. Well, maybe a 5-6 episode series could have been better and could have done justice to the story. 

Before watching this movie, I had seen 3 of Steven Soderbergh's works namely 'Ocean s Eleven', 'Magic Mike', and 'Logan Lucky'. This was my fourth movie directed by him and is also ranked fourth in that list. This movie could have been great but ends up being strictly average.

If you are curious to know what happens, you can give this movie a go, but I highly recommend that you go ahead and watch Bill Gates' TED video. In the meantime, I will go ahead and watch 'Outbreak' (1995).

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