"Contagion"
The calm is what's so startling here, the cool precision with which Steven Soderbergh depicts a deadly virus that spreads throughout the world, quickly claiming millions of victims. There's no great panic in his tone, no hysteria. Characters become increasingly confused and frustrated, they struggle to survive and then die in a matter-of-fact way. Even the eventual instances of looting and rioting that crop up feel like blips of intensity, understandable reactions to an incomprehensible situation. Working from a script by Scott Z. Burns, who also wrote his 2009 comedy ``The Informant!,'' Soderbergh takes us from suburban living rooms to labs at the Centers for Disease Control to remote Asian villages with equally clear-eyed realism. The attention to detail _ and to the infinite ways germs can spread that we probably don't want to think about _ provide the sensation that this sort of outbreak really could happen right now. Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne and Marion Cotillard are among the stellar ensemble cast, but Jennifer Ehle nearly steals the whole movie from them as a CDC doctor racing to find a cure. PG-13 for disturbing content and some language. 103 minutes. Three stars out of four.
_ Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
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