Despite its comforting and convincing advertising claims of being able to kill all known germs dead, a bottle of Domestos is unlikely to help us out in a crisis with those germs we don't know about. And it's one strain of these viral strangers that start quite a stir in Steven Soderburgh's infectious title.

Although out in Hong Kong on business, Beth Hemhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) finally gets to let her hair down in a local restaurant. She has a few drinks and enjoys some local cuisine before heading home to the States.

Not long after her night out, Beth starts to feel unwell, but doesn't think much of it. Unbeknownst to her, the damage has been done, as her path – and more to the point her now deadly germs – have crossed that of many others.

Before you can say "bless you", an epidemic breaks out, but with Beth already aboard her plane home, it's not long before the planet is facing a pandemic.

With the world on the edge of something extremely grave, the scenario makes different people react in different ways; Beth's husband Mitch (Matt Damon) for instance, has only his wife's ailing condition on his mind; Dr Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) finds his unit at the heart of attempting to find not only what caused this unknown outbreak, but more importantly, how to beat it; then there's renowned blogger Alan (Jude Law) who has an interesting spin on conspiracy theories believing that the government is far from telling the truth about the outbreak.

Meanwhile the clock is ticking, and with bodies beginning to literally pile up all over the globe, a cure seems alarmingly far off in the distance.

When are my disgusting fans going to stop leaving their germ-ridden fan mail on my car.

Despite his recent declaration that he was going to walk away from directing for a bit, Steven Soderburgh still appears to be incredibly busy behind the camera. Not only has he recently released this feature and Haywire in close succession, he still appears to be involved in at at least three more future features, including the biopic Behind the Candelabra starring Michael Douglas as the flamboyant performer Liberace.

It would be a shame if he did go on hiatus, as he is one of the most interesting directors of his generation. This particular film certainly highlights some of his talents, but it's not without its flaws.

As you would expect with Soderburgh's indie background, his film doesn't fit the stereotypical format of the disaster flick, unlike say, Wolfgang Peterson's 1995 Outbreak. Soderburgh attempts to create a sense of fear almost on the back of all the science he has flying around. It's a fear bred from the cold, harsh facts that could come from a real outbreak.

It's possibly too clinical in its approach however, as he constantly suppresses any real emotive outbreak from the deadly scenario he presents. Even when he does so, mainly through Damon's character, it always feels like it's at arm's length, ironically enough.

To re-enforce this almost documentary style presentation, he even uses a soundtrack sparingly.

It also suffers from characters that often don't interact with others, so it translates to almost a collection of character vignettes other than a cohesive storyline. It could be argued that the connecting factor is the virus itself, but the reality is that just perpetuates the isolation throughout. Although it's no great disappointment that many of the film's stars don't share any screen time together, it does add to the number of mini-stories that the audience has to keep tabs on.

Soderburgh does manage to get some fine performances from some of his cast though; most notably Larry Fishburne who just proves how highly underused and underrated he seemingly is currently. Paltrow does well with what little she has to do, but does manage to rack up yet another scene where her head ends up a cropper.

Contagion may well be indicative of how a real pandemic may break, and subsequently how ill-prepared the world may well be for it, but suffers from its lack of thrills as a spectacle.