Marion Cotillard plays a medical worker
Arriving two days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” is a serious all-star thriller about the rapid worldwide spread of a killer virus that’s easily the scariest of the disaster films that have followed the attack.
You’ll think twice about shaking hands, sharing food, touching doorknobs or not laying in a six-month supply of Purell after seeing people dropping left and right as panic spreads around the globe — while scientists race to contain an airborne pandemic that quickly eclipses the 50 million killed by the 1918 influenza pandemic.
The screenplay by Scott Z. Burns — who collaborated with Soderbergh on the vastly different “The Informant!” — takes great pains to present its situations realistically, and includes a lot of intelligent speculation about what sort of political, economic and ethical questions would be raised by such a disaster.
PHOTOS: ‘CONTAGION’ PREMIERE IN NY
At the same time, Soderbergh doesn’t lecture the audience, packing a lot of thrills, chills and useful health information — and references to SARS, swine flu, Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 — into a running time well under two hours.
It was an inspired touch to cast Gwyneth Paltrow — an actress many of us love to hate — as the pandemic’s Patient Zero. She unknowingly picks up the bug on a business trip to Hong Kong, and is first seen spreading it through the first-class lounge at a Chicago airport after a layover quickie with her lover.
Within the film’s first 10 minutes, Paltrow expires after her arrival home in Minnesota — I’m not giving away anything that’s not in the trailer — and is quickly followed into the afterlife by the son she embraces.
Her widower, played by a low-key Matt Damon in the ensemble’s largest role, has a natural immunity, but he’s quickly hustled into quarantine after the victims start piling up.
The film’s other focus is the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, where big-shot Laurence Fishburne dispatches Kate Winslet to Minnesota to try to control the growing pandemic.
It’s erupted over the Thanksgiving weekend — “the biggest shopping weekend of the year!” exclaims a skeptical gubernatorial aide when Winslet suggests closing shopping malls as a precaution.
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, a World Health Organization representative (Marion Cotillard) has tracked the source of Paltrow’s infection to a casino. But then she’s kidnapped and held hostage by people who want to insure they’re at the front of the long line when and if a cure is found.
After the virus’ source is discovered by a San Francisco researcher (Elliott Gould), a CDC scientist (Jennifer Ehle, outstanding in her first major screen role) races to develop a vaccine — and a shortcut to avoid lengthy clinical trials.
Even if she can, how will limited quantities be distributed? What are the priorities? How much should the public know, and when should it know it?
As panic spread and riots begin to break out, a sleazy blogger (Jude Law, perfectly cast) cashes in by plugging a homeopathic cure he has a financial interest in.
“Contagion” does a good job of showing how, thanks to the Internet, misinformation can spread as rapidly as any disease — and, under the right circumstances, can be just as lethal.
lou.lumenick@nypost.com