Many a horror film has a man with odd teeth and strange accent. Contagion has Jude Law. He's conspiracy theory blogger Alan Krumwiede. He's got a wonky tooth interrupting his film star smile and his character's vaguely Australian tones might be inspired by Wikileaks guy Julian Assange.
Though he doesn't take up much screentime, he's also a jarring note in this riveting, menacing movie, which, with its depiction of a global pandemic from a new cross-species virus is too frighteningly plausible to pass as horror or sci-fi.
But Law's oddball does pass for light relief in this clincally serious real-word medical thriller which shows director Steven Soderbergh's abilities to marshal multiple stars and storylines as he did in drug-war ensemble drama Traffic.
It doesn't lack for gallows humour, but Contagion mostly doesn't let you off the hook with its insistent docudrama approach. Some of it does feels familiar, like the inevitable National Guard roadblocks, the looting and violence that quickly result from the rising panic.
There are a few touches of sentimentality, mainly to do with Matt Damon's stay-at-home dad. He's the everyman in all this; his wife Gwyneth Paltrow, having returned to the Midwest from a Hong Kong business trip feeling like crap, is soon to be toe-tagged (and worse, care of the film's most grisly scene) as the pandemic's "Patient Zero".
