[6]

Steven Soderbergh directs what is probably the most believable, realistic approach to a deadly epidemic movie that I’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the best movie. The building action is the film’s strong point, and primarily because you can easily imagine these things happening — runs on grocery stores and banks, looting, people boarding up in their homes, states closing their borders, martial law, lotteries to determine who gets the first vaccinations… And at times, the movie had me feeling a genuine sense of dread. But the vignette storytelling poses a challenge to our emotional investment in any of the characters and the third act is essentially one long, anti-climactic happy ending. With Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, and Laurence Fishburne.