As a kid, I’d walk home from school with my little brother and imagine what I’d do if giant waves (as tall as mountains) suddenly appeared. It was intriguing just to wonder what my reaction would be.
Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s thriller “Contagion” plays on this idea by suggesting how the present day world might react were we ever confronted with a disease as horrific as the Bubonic Plague.
The film opens with Gwyenth Paltrow’s character, a Minnesota woman (an excellent choice to ram the idea close to home for audiences) traveling overseas for business and, upon returning, becomes violently ill from a mysterious disease. Suddenly, worldwide, various people start coming down with the same symptoms and dying. There seems to be no cure, and this thing starts spreading into the tens of millions faster than you can say, “We’re f*cked.”
