'Populaire', 'A Hijacking', 'Fast & Furious 6', 'Behind the Candelabra' and 'The Iceman': review round-up

A bumper edition round-up this week, as I've not updated for a while. Been busy with other stuff, like hosting/writing the Hold Onto Your Butts film quiz at Komedia (in Brighton). Above is the latest of our picture rounds, as drawn by the excellent Joe Blann. Consensus is that this is the hardest of the picture rounds so far... I don't think anybody got the three point question!

'Populaire' - Dir. Regis Roinsard (12A)

Light, colourful and fluffy in a way that won't surprise those familiar with this brand of whimsical, middle-brow French comedy - 'Populaire' is an affable enough movie, mostly thanks to its supremely watchable leads: Deborah Francois as a clumsy, hapless secretary with a special gift for speed-typing and Roman Duris as her cold and competitive boss. Set in the late-50s, at a time when international typing competitions were apparently the hottest ticket in town, and a source of front-page news, it's a formula rom-com that's also equal parts 'Rocky' (with its heavy reliance on sports movie tropes), 'The Secretary' (in its power-imbalanced, sadomasochistic relationship between boss and employee) and 'Mad Men' (if only in its emphasis on the sartorial glamour of the period, as popularised by that TV show). It's chic and mildly diverting stuff, that provides a few gentle laughs - and just as many truly awful lines to go with its questionable gender politics.

'A Hijacking' - Dir. Tobias Lindholm (15)

An exceptional Danish thriller which takes an almost procedural approach to its realistic portrayal of modern day piracy, this is a tense, tightly-wound piece of filmmaking that explores what happens when a large freighter ship is commandeered by armed African pirates and its crew held for months on the open sea: a fate that's become increasingly common in the last decade. As the pirates haggle for ransom with the company that owns the ship, 'A Hijacking' follows both the struggles of the captured crew (mostly via Johan Philip Asbæk's traumatised cook) and the moral dilemmas facing those in the company board room - with Søren Malling's no-nonsense CEO taking a dangerously hands-on approach in negotiations, against the advice of a piracy expert (played with authority by real-life corporate security consultant Gary Skjoldmose-Porter).

Even-handed and intelligent, director Tobias Lindholm's film doesn't lay the blame at the feet of the corporation - it doesn't present the board as villains for not immediately caving in to all the pirates demands - and doesn't even really vilify the pirates (even if they are often quite frightening and capable of great violence). Instead it seems to simply present the experience as what it is: something terrifying and life-changing for everybody involved, right down the anxious families of those held captive. Malling's CEO is shown as a man under great pressure, who - though not subject to the appalling conditions of the ship's crew - has his life upended by events to a very similar degree. What the film doesn't do is explore any of the political or economic conditions that have made piracy increasingly common, but that's the subject for a preachier, less visceral movie: one potentially less devastating, shocking and emotional.

'Fast & Furious 6' - Dir. Justin Lin (12A)

I haven't seen any of the other films in this increasingly popular series, but I understand the franchise used to be about street racing - something that, save a pointless, mid-film diversion, doesn't really factor in this straight-up action movie. It's all shooting and punching and making things explode, whilst cops hire criminals to catch worse criminals - in a plot that involves some McGuffin weapon that, if sold to an unfriendly nation, could mean war and stuff. It doesn't really matter. What matters is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is in it, along with franchise mainstays Vin "The Mumbling" Diesel and Paul "Who Is This Guy" Walker. They drive fast and incredibly shiny cars - and they do ridiculous, physics defying things in the name of punching the bad dudes, scoring with chicks in hot-pants and safeguarding their "family".

That particular F-word gets bandied about a lot here, as the film goes to great lengths to show that it's actually a deeply emotional drama about a group of friends with feelings and character arcs such - just like in a real film. But it isn't and, frankly, it'd be better if they didn't bother pretending otherwise. The film is far more fun when tanks are crushing cars on a Spanish highway than when it's about gruff, musclemen explaining how they've got "to set things right" for some wrong committed five films ago that nobody remembers. Just explode more stuff already. Especially as the film's attempts to have anything approaching a plot always backfire, as our heroes repeatedly interrogate enemies in order to find out stuff they already knew - and one character even travels to another continent, has himself put in prison and very nearly dies, trying to unearth knowledge the rest of the gang seemingly already posses back in England. Very odd.

It's also amusing that nearly every scene in the first half of the film follows the exact same formula: a group of our heroes are ridiculed by unnecessarily rude people after asking a polite question, and respond by beating up everybody in the room. The message seems to be: don't mock Vin Diesel... he's, like, really strong and he'll probably smash your face in until you're unconscious. It's a difficult message to argue with, but it isn't revelatory, even to a 'Fast & Furious' series newcomer like myself. Don't pick on people with big muscles for no apparent reason, y'all.

In all seriousness, it's hard to get over how brazenly sexist this film is in order to sit back and enjoy the popcorn. It's all gyrating women in bikinis, dancing around cars, whilst our protagonists watch and say "damn", possibly whilst bumping bro-fists. At one point a character explains that cars are better than women because "when you trade up for a better model they don't take half your shit". This isn't an ironic statement and it says a lot about who these douche bag characters are and who they think this film is for. The Rock admittedly has a really appealing screen presence - self-aware and charming - but the rest of the lunk-heads that make up the cast, including a sadly under-utilised Gina Carano, are just grunting meat-puppets. Aside from a couple of jaw-droppingly ridiculous set pieces, this is a film that could have been gloriously trashy and over-the-top - in a way that compensated you for the aforementioned stupidity of it all - but ended up merely being a bit dull.

'Behind the Candelabra' - Dir. Steven Soderbergh (15)

Following his supposed "last ever film" - 'Side Effects', released earlier this year - Steven Soderbergh returns to cinemas with this blackly comic and extremely bleak portrait of glamorous entertainer Liberace, which focuses on the famously closeted pianist's peculiar relationship with a man named Scott Thorson, upon whose recollections the film is based. A TV movie in the US, produced by HBO after studios reportedly rejected the film as "too gay" to be commercial, 'Behind the Candelabra' is the fruit of a long-running passion project of the prolific director and sees Michael Douglas and Matt Damon deliver brilliant performances as Liberace and Thorson respectively. Douglas in particular is in inspired form, with his turn potentially career-defining, seemingly coming out of nowhere. In many ways his performance is the obvious joy and appeal of the film, with Liberace an outrageous, larger than life figure, so credit must also go to Damon for being the emotional center that gives meaning to all the mincing.

Even as it follows Liberace in his twilight years, with his peak decades behind him, the film manages to show us the highs and lows of his life: giving us glimpses of his performances on Vegas stages, in front of adoring fans, as well as showing us the loneliness and pitiful sadness born of that mix of hyper-fame/wealth and keeping such a large aspect of his life a (admittedly poorly kept) secret. He's a paranoid figure and a man with few (arguably no) real friends - or meaningful connections of any kind, beyond the revolving door of pretty boys that he keeps in his "palatial kitsch" mansion. We can only speculate about how close to reality the film gets, being based on the memoirs of a man who unsuccessfully sued Liberace, but the film is quite perfect at plunging the viewer headlong into the despair and loneliness we can imagine comes with extreme celebrity.

Where the film really excels is in its portrayal of the power imbalance shown in the relationship between Thorson and his self-described "father, brother, lover and best friend" Liberace. This has a universal quality, as Thorson - so in thrall to, and financially dependent on his partner - has almost no agency. He is in a precarious position, and is all too aware of that fact, which means he is to a certain extent unable to resist much of his cruel and often abusive treatment. He's a man who offers and gives so much to his lover but whose contributions are overlooked and frequently denied the moment there's an argument - a situation that's probably familiar to many. It's this transcendent bit of drama, along with Soderbergh's hauntingly sterile cinematography, the black wit of the script and the fine central performances, that means the film stands up very well next to the director's other minor masterpieces of recent years.

'The Iceman' - Dir. Ariel Vromen (15)

An impressive cast - lead by the intensely watchable Michael Shannon - doesn't stop this "based on a true story" biopic about a notorious hitman from being deadly dull. Basically, it's the tale of a guy who murders hundreds of people in cold blood - seemingly because he has a cold detachment that renders him indifferent to human life, brought on by an abusive childhood and lapsed Catholicism - but who's alright really because he doesn't want anything bad to happen to his young daughters. That's about the depth of it. Chris Evans and David Schwimmer are nearly unrecognisable in supporting roles, which is at least mildly interesting, but otherwise we have Ray Liotta as the schlubby, unpredictable head of an Italian crime family and Winona Ryder as the shiny-eyed innocent who doesn't know where her husbands money comes from. Maybe it's a victim of art imitating life, but it's a story we've seen played out a million times before, and with a lot more vigour and imagination.

For a movie about a contract killer, there's no style or panache to how he does his business. Some key "hits" occur off-screen and most are left to montage - with the only exception being a hit on James Franco, which many may find cathartic in the wake of his extreme over-exposure. This is fine if we aren't being sold the crime as glamour bit we usually get in mob movies, but the film offers nothing compelling in its place. The only consequence to violence and a life of crime that we see is that, eventually, people might be violent towards you and your loved ones. Aside from that it's a passionless film with nothing to offer.

'We Bought A Zoo' review:

Only in the perpetually sunny, 70s "Album-Oriented Rock" infused world of Cameron Crowe - where momentary lapses in confidence are on par with cancer - does a man respond to unemployment and the loss of a loved one with the impulse purchase of a large zoo. Though Matt Damon stars as Benjamin Mee, the real-life figure upon whose memoir the film is apparently based, there can be little doubt that an audience is being invited into Crowe's world rather than the one we see out the window; A world as always built around grand gestures, cute motivational turns of phrase, and populated by uniformly winsome, oddball characters.

Earnestly sentimental and overflowing with whimsy, Crowe's films are easy to dismiss, though such an act can feel as mean spirited as heckling a eulogy, or writing graffiti on a Mr. Men book. His films are intended as celebrations of life and the innate goodness of the human spirit and, when they hit the spot, their sweet nature can overpower all but the most reactionary cynicism. For instance the deeply personal 'Almost Famous', another loose autobiography (this time of Crowe's youth as a music journalist), is one of the defining films of the last two decades. Yet when they fail, his films leave themselves so open to assault, with the writer/director's heart so plainly on his sleeve, that criticism feels like a form of bullying. As with the much-derided 'Elizabethtown'.

With its saccharine zoo-buying premise, it's no surprise that 'We Bought A Zoo' does not reach the dramatic heights of 'Almost Famous' or 'Jerry Maguire', the formal ambition of the badly received 'Vanilla Sky' remake, nor the zeitgeist appeal of 'Singles'. In tone and spirit it feels like the inbred cousin of 'Elizabethtown' and proof-positive that the filmmaker has leaped into self-parody, becoming sappier and more bombastic than ever. 'We Bought A Zoo' is far more damaging an anti-Crowe missile than any of his most ardent critics could ever have hoped to launch. It's a film in which an aggressively adorable girl complains that she can't sleep because next door's "happy is too loud".

It's a film in which Thomas Haden Church (ever an uncomfortable marriage between the body of Hercules and the demeanor of a terminally ill family pet) can throw his arms into the air and, apropos of nothing, say "joy" without it seemingly either ironic or incongruous. It's a film in which Damon's financial recklessness is enabled by his late wife's secret leaving of $84, 000 "circus money", in apparent anticipation that he would do something this grand and stupid (and who can't identify with that in a time of recession?). It's a film in which someone genuinely utters the line "I like the animals... but I love the people", and in which the musical choices are so painfully on the nose that a downpour is accompanied by Bob Dylan's "Buckets of Rain". Pathetic fallacy indeed.

In this world a teenage boys "dark" artwork (charcoal etchings of decapitated bodies and the like) is seen as evidence of a cry for help - a glimpse at how superficially gloomy you have to get before Crowe would sit you down for a pep talk, and preach about the life-changing impact of "twenty seconds of insane courage", like a man who is part director, part music critic and part walking self-help cack fountain. And if 'Elizabethtown' copied the plot of 'Jerry Maguire' almost wholesale (allowing for a shift from athlete management to high-end sports shoe design), 'We Bought A Zoo' effectively imports whole lines from that previous movie, with Scarlett Johansson breathlessly complaining about how her life as head zookeeper means she doesn't get to go out with her friends and meet guys. Likewise, Damon reenacts the scene in which a near-defeated Tom Cruise confronts and wins over his doubters.

I haven't even mentioned that Damon's character refers to his spur of the moment zoo acquisition as being part of a plan to give his children "an authentic American experience"... whatever that means (an image of George Washington running an owl sanctuary springs immediately to mind). Of course, this tendency towards emotional tourettes and romanticised public meltdowns hasn't been an automatic black mark against previous Cameron Crowe movies, and perhaps wouldn't be here if the film ever ventured beyond trite ideas of "letting go" and "moving on", as Damon attempts to reconcile the loss of his sadly departed wife. The tale of a middle-aged man struggling to relate to his eldest child in the wake of losing his partner, 'We Bought A Zoo' is basically what 'The Descendants' would have been if George Clooney, with smiling insanity, resolved his problems by relocating his family to a theme park.

'We Bought A Zoo' is out now in the UK, rated 'PG' by the BBFC.

'Mission: Impossible 4' vs 'The Bourne Supremacy' - Solving the Relationship Problem

The following contains *SPOILERS* for the new Mission: Impossible as well as some older action series, notably the Bourne films.

It's a no-brainer, but action movie protagonists exist predominately as vessels for wish fulfilment and escapism. James Bond, to give one enduring example, is sexy, smart, strong, competent in almost every discipline, fluent in every language, capable of piloting any vehicle and firing every kind of weapon. He also always gets the girl(s); a different girl every episode. Christ, Connery starts 'Goldfinger' in bed with one woman (who soon becomes a literal object) and later beds the lesbian Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman). When they end the film together at some island retreat we know that we will never see her again. She has already served her purpose: she has been conquered by Bond.

It's a habit 007 shares with most of his action hero brethren, but this constant bed hopping, from sequel to sequel, doesn't exist only in the name of misogyny or even in the appeal of sexual promiscuity. It's commonplace for two much more practical reasons. Firstly, studios are understandably reluctant to change a winning formula. Bond was single in the last ten films? Why write him as in a relationship now? (In fact why change him at all?) The second reason, I believe, is because writers don't know how to write stable relationships within this kind of story.

It's for these reasons that the romantic prize in one action flick is then killed off or, more commonly, ignored in the follow-up - undermining the previous film's pretence that their encounter was any more than an erotic frisson.

This is not a phenomena restricted to straight macho action stuff - or indeed to motion pictures - with screen and comic book/TV versions of superheroes existing in various states of "will they, won't they?" relationship stasis. Tim Burton notably didn't retain Kim Basinger's services for 'Batman Returns' - an absence dismissed with a passing line delivered by the hero's butler. It's a perfect example of my previous point: why is Vicki Vale the fabled "one" in the first movie - even trusted with Batman's secret identity - yet so easily dismissed by the time of the second? She's a non-character: the writers didn't know what to do with her and the fans didn't miss her. She had been conquered.

If on rare occasions an action hero is shown to be in a stable, long-term relationship, it is either to derive comedy from the incongruity of mixing marriage (boring domesticity) with a life of excitement (see 'Mr & Mrs Smith') or to give him (or her, but usually him) someone to rescue. When a relationship survives into a sequel, one of the few options considered by writers is to give the couple a child to freshen up the dynamic (see 'The Mummy Returns').

The other common option, as explored in 'Romancing the Stone' sequel 'The Jewel of the Nile', is to pull the lovebirds apart and make them do that same crazy love dance all over again (the equilibrium being disrupted and restored in the great movie tradition). This is the preferred solution in instances where the franchise is dependant on the continued presence of two stars. It's what would have happened if anybody had cared enough for them to make a 'Knight and Day 2'.

Sometimes these hero-heroine relationships are handled a bit better. Lawrence Kasdan still provides the best written example of a decent romantic relationship working within a major studio blockbuster sequel: as evidenced in the great chemistry between Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) in 'The Empire Strikes Back'. However, the next 'Star Wars' film, 'Return of the Jedi' is less successful, half-heartedly disrupting this relationship via the world's worst plot device: frustratingly easily explained misunderstanding. Here Han strops off because he becomes convinced Leia is more interested in Luke (unbeknownst to him, her brother) before they kiss and make up at the end.

It's worth mentioning that women aren't the only victims of this imagination vacuum when it comes to on-screen relationships. Michael Biehn's Corporal Hicks is established as a love interest for Signourney Weaver's Ripley in 'Aliens' only to be killed off within the opening credits of 'Alien 3'. Incumbent Bond Daniel Craig also suffered this ignominy, being excluded from the 'Tomb Raider' sequel after serving as Angelina Jolie's piece of hunk-candy in the original video game adaptation.

I bring this issue up because of similarities between two films I saw just this last week: 'Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol' and 2004's 'The Bourne Supremacy' - two action sequels which carry over relationships from previous instalments with mixed success/integrity. Neither buck the trends of the action genre wholly, with both partner's effectively written out of the story so as to keep our hero mobile, yet it's nevertheless interesting how they both go about overcoming the "problem" of the hero relationship.

In 'The Bourne Identity' Matt Damon's Jason Bourne takes a familiar action hero route - bumping into Franka Potente's Marie by chance, inadvertently drawing her into his dangerous life (where she is often literally a passenger) and, naturally, forming a romantic attachment. The film ends with the characters a couple - apparently living together in Greece. Writer Tony Gilroy has Franka Potente killed off within twenty minutes of the first sequel, 'The Bourne Supremacy' - shot in the head and left at the bottom of a river.

This serves a dual purpose: it gives Bourne a clear motive to come out of hiding and resume his feud (just as Craig's Bond did at the tail-end of 'Casino Royale') and also frees him up for more globe-trotting, wish fulfilment action. In this way it's routine, but it's elevated above the convention by Gilroy, who ensures Marie is present throughout 'Supremacy' and even the trilogy's concluding chapter, 'The Bourne Ultimatum'. For one thing he doesn't put Bourne anywhere near a romantic situation in either sequel, with the hero's grief lasting and tangible. Bourne pointedly keeps a photo of Marie even as he burns everything else. In this way Gilroy ensures Potente's memorable, capable and intensely likable character did not exist for nothing.

Killing her off is still an undeniably cynical move, but he does it smartly and with no small amount of class. For instance, Marie is shot whilst driving during a high-speed car chase, which is a fitting climax to her arc seeing as how she entered Bourne's story as a driver in the first place. It is also thrilling that she is given such a great action sequence (to me the best in by far the strongest Bourne film) prior to her demise. Throughout these early scenes we also feel that time has passed and that both characters have grown in each other's company, becoming a functioning unit dependant on one another.

The same can not be said for the equivalent bit of 'Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol'. The fourth 'Mission' movie breaks franchise tradition by taking a stab at something like overarching continuity and character development by retaining Ethan Hunt's (Tom Cruise) wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) from 'Mission: Impossible 3'. But, in contrast to 'The Bourne Supremacy', this continuation feels strained and disingenuous (however much I enjoyed the film overall). Basically writers André Nemec and Josh Appelbaum were written into a corner by the third movie, which ended with Ethan and Julia a happily married couple. This could not be outright ignored in the traditional way, as it might have been were the characters merely getting it on (as with Thandie Newton's heroine in 'Mission: Impossible 2').

Remember: Monaghan, as a supporting cast member, is not essential to the franchise so, by law, she has to go. Their solution to the relationship problem? Ignore Julia until the very end of the movie - in a scene so tacked on it could be deleted without even slight damage to preceding two hours (in fact it might improve the film). Sure, they talk about her a few times in the body of the movie, saying that she died between films, but her "death" mostly serves as a convenient hook to connect Hunt with new buddy Brandt (Jeremy Renner) - who blames himself for reasons that are too convoluted to explain.

Though ultimately it's revealed that Ethan has faked her death in order to protect her from the harm that comes from a life on the edge with the Cruiser (begging the obvious question: why did he marry her in the first place?). This device enables Hunt to remain blemish free as a character (he hasn't betrayed his marriage or failed to protect his wife), whilst freeing him up for future hijinks in which (I guarantee) Julia will play no part. The film's concluding moments, and with them Ethan Hunt's entire marriage up to this point, feel false.

I joined Bourne in mourning for Marie who I hoped would stick around a bit longer, however much I knew she had to go. I wanted Jason Bourne to be happy and to live a life with her because I believed that's what he genuinely wanted. I believed it's what Marie wanted too. By comparison, I couldn't care less about Julia and I only imagine Ethan does because we're told this is the case. Julia was invented to be a kidnap victim in the third film: to make things "personal" for our Tom in the most hackneyed possible way. At the end of that entry she suddenly, from nowhere, exhibits major gun skills, offing two trained killers. She just as suddenly disappears from her husband's life in time for the sequel and her absence is hardly felt.

It's no reflection on Monaghan at all, but Julia isn't a character: she's a plot catalyst who stopped being necessary the moment she was rescued. Her continued existence at the end of the fourth film is simply a means to an end - a way of filling in a gaping continuity hole. And that's all. And we feel it. Marie and Julia are written out of their respective movies for the same basic storytelling reasons. Yet Gilroy's resolution (or lack thereof, with Bourne still alone, lost and grieving) is far more interesting and emotional.

'Margaret' review:

When a completed film spends years gathering dust before a perfunctory release it's usually because the studio behind it is aware said film isn't any good. It's odd then that Kenneth Lonergan's 'Margaret', shot in 2006 and just released at the tail end of 2011, should be earning so many rave reviews from critics. Apparently its time in cinema purgatory was the result of a protracted legal clash between the writer-director and 20th Century Fox over the final cut, with Martin Scorsese and long-serving editor Thelma Schoonmaker eventually brought in to mediate between the two - producing a final cut which runs at two and a half hours. The result is one of the year's most emotionally affecting and thought-provoking dramas - even if its protagonist is comfortably one of the most infuriating screen creations of recent memory.

The drama exists principally in the "moral gymnasium" of Lisa Cohen, a high school student played by a fresh-faced Anna Paquin, who is the unwitting cause of a traffic accident which sees a woman (Allison Janney) killed by a speeding bus - the immediate aftermath of which is truly, utterly harrowing. Lonergan's sprawling follow-up to 2000's 'You Can Count On Me' is chiefly about taking responsibility for your actions - something Lisa spends about two hours and twenty minutes singularly failing to do, intruding on and causing trouble in several other people's lives in the process. Her mother (J. Smith-Cameron), a successful Broadway actress, bares the brunt of her contemptuous attitude and insensitivity most fully, though a mild-mannered English teacher (Matthew Broderick), a hunky "math" teacher (Matt Damon) and the friend's and family of the deceased also have to deal with her inexhaustible pouting, arguing and self-important drivel. And firmly in her cross-hairs is Mark Ruffalo as the bus driver who Lisa is determined to see punished for the accident in order to assuage her own guilt.

Lisa is a brilliantly written character. She's truly horrific, yet she isn't a caricature and Lonergan's treatment of her is infinitely humane. I even related to her a little: she's a perfectly observed example of youthful know-it-all-ness. She literally has an answer for everything, never listens to anybody and asserts half-formed, confused opinions about the world as if they are ironclad facts - often seeming foolish in the process (such as when she vents her frustration with an extremely helpful detective by irrelevantly chiding him about the history of racially motivated police brutality). She consistently chooses her friends with unfailing superficiality, being nasty to both the boy who earnestly likes her (John Gallagher, Jr.) and Broderick's affable teacher, whilst sucking up to the cool kid (Kieran Culkin) and Damon's square-jawed hunk. If that reads like a cliché, then it's one Lonergan survives because he writes all of these people equally nice, rather than creating any goodies and baddies. It's more important what Lisa projects onto these people, without consideration of their feelings, than who they actually are.

'Margaret' is a brilliantly conceived character study and never less than compelling as a look at life in the shadow of tragedy, even if it's theme rich and character packed to the point of distension (I haven't even mentioned the incongruity of Jean Reno as Colombian lothario Ramon). But conceived in the more immediate aftermath of 9/11, it's disquieting how relevant it remains to the political moment given its protracted post-production period. Set in New York, with heavy emphasis placed on the city, there are frequent heated exchanges about the rights and wrongs of American foreign policy between Lisa and a Syrian classmate. Here Lisa's refusal to at least share responsibility for the accident is presented as having moral equivalence to her nation's emotional, reactionary blindness towards the human cost of the "war on terror". The fact that this element of the film still registers (even a reference to a disliked "current President" survives the change in administrations) is a monument to how little has changed in the last half-decade.

'Margaret' is rated '15' by the BBFC and on a limited release in the UK now.

'Contagion' review:

In the 21st century, doomsday scenarios don't come much more frightening than the threat of a sudden worldwide viral outbreak. More than two decades since the end of the Cold War, the atomic bomb ceases to seem like a credible threat to our day to day lives - however frightening the prospect of those weapons might remain. But a deadly and highly contagious epidemic, rapidly spreading around the globe in the age of frequent air travel and increased global trade? That danger resonates stronger than ever with the public, as the sensationalist tabloid reporting on SARS and Avian Flu in the last decade can confirm. It's a fear that helped propel 'Contagion' to the top of the US box office last month, with Steven Soderbergh's latest star-studded ensemble movie exploiting our paranoia with deadly precision as we witness a queasily realistic depiction of a disease which kills tens of millions of people in less than a year.

Opening shots focus on human interaction and with great economy depict the dozens of ways such an outbreak might spread, as people shake hands, hand over money or serve food. These sinister close-ups turn everyday items and normal social behaviour into something out of a horror film. The ominous electronic score composed by Cliff Martinez (whose work was so crucial to the success of 'Drive' earlier this year) helps compound this air of tension as the sickly (and soon-to-be-dead) Gwyneth Paltrow makes her way from Hong Kong to Minnesota, stopping in Illinois along the way for some extra-marital sex, unknowingly providing us with one more example of how such an infection might be passed amongst the population.



In the wake of this first death we are introduced to nearly a dozen scarcely connecting characters who could feel more like experimental lab chimps than people, each existing to show us another face of the tragedy in a film which is primarily concerned with the mechanics of how such an event would take place and how the authorities might seek to contain it. They are for the most part ciphers, but the calibre of actor Soderbergh can attract ensures that performances are strong across the board, with Matt Damon (a grieving husband), Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Jennifer Ehle, Laurence Fishburne and Elliott Gould (as assorted determined scientist types), Bryan Cranston (a military man) and Jude Law (an online conspiracy theorist) helping to add personality to this determinedly sterile, macro account of events. And with one Oscar winner already in a body bag shortly after the credits, it's clear that even A-list status might not be enough to ensure survival.

As the year rolls on and the death toll climbs new problems emerge off the back of the epidemic, including widespread social unrest (looting, arson, violence, murder), political scandal and manipulation of the media - courtesy of misinformation and distrust spread by Law's popular blogger. Meanwhile doctors struggle to provide a cure and supermarkets run out of food. The wide-ranging consequences of the outbreak - presented in a hyper-realistic way - only heighten our fear of such an event, which here turns major cities like Minneapolis and San Francisco into something resembling a third world war zone. Though in spite of the film's pursuit of gritty realism, Scott Z. Burns' dense, medical jargon heavy script is still (I think playfully) peppered with disaster movie clichés ("it's figuring us out quicker than we're figuring it out!"), the best of which sees one city official oppose telling citizens to stay in their homes in the run up to Thanksgiving ("the busiest shopping week of the year!").



If his public declaration that he is retiring from cinema (pending completion of his next two projects: 'Haywire' and 'Magic Mike') is to be believed, 'Contagion' looks set to be one of Soderbergh's final films, which would be a great pity: he's often been as interesting as he is prolific. After all, he's been responsible for works as diverse as 'Sex, Lies and Videotape', 'Traffic', and 'Che', in a career spent alternating between the defiantly commercial likes of 'Ocean's Eleven' and such wilfully obscure titles as 'The Girlfriend Experience' and 'Bubble' (an experiment in simultaneous theatrical, DVD and TV on demand releasing). A few of his films have been near great, whilst others can be chalked up as folly without too much cause for controversy, but Soderbergh - one of a few directors who acts as his own cinematographer - is always worth a watch. And never more so than with 'Contagion'.

It feels slightly too long (I was surprised to find it only lasted 106 minutes) and, in terms of narrative focus, it's every bit as scattershot as its director's filmography - with some characters unceremoniously forgotten, whilst others reappear just as you've forgotten they were in the film to begin with. Yet it's gripping, frightening, filled with haunting images and, I suspect, it will come to be seen as the definitive film about worldwide medical crisis. If the worst should happen and such an event does take place in our lifetimes, you will likely here someone say "it's just like in that movie 'Contagion'" as an army roadblock closes your town. It certainly left me wanting to stockpile supplies and seal the exits, too frightened to touch my own face. And that's the sign of a good film.

'Contagion' is out in the UK now where it is rated '12A' by the BBFC.