But there's a worthiness to this film, a sense of an underlying determination not to be sensational, which makes it finally disappointing. I rather like spectacle in my Armageddon, or at least in my burning buildings, and this was all rather pared down. Certainly we see scenes of crowds going crazy and looting, but it's all kept somewhat local and incidental. Some big dramatics, some mass hysteria, wouldn't have gone amiss. Instead, the raft of stars whom Soderbergh managed to sign up are given lots of close-ups and chances to do Serious Work. Along with Paltrow and Law, there is Kate Winslet as an uptight epidemiologist, Laurence Fishburne as her boss, Marion Cotillard as a UN official and a brooding Matt Damon as Paltrow's soon-to-be-ex-husband. The presence of Damon is key here: one simply can't imagine an actor who takes himself as seriously as Damon ever consenting to be in something so beneath him as, say, The Towering Inferno. It would have to be more than that — the movie would have to be saying something.

So he might be disappointed that Contagion walks the walk very well, but ultimately doesn't talk the talk. It ends with an explanation which is niftily put together but which is anti-climatic as a payoff. In the dramatic void I found myself pondering peripheral issues instead, such as the grave folly of mass global travel on demand in an age of lethal viruses. Thank goodness at least for subtext.