Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Opening scene 'explains' why Hurt is later 'immune' to the 'Contaminated Man'. Too bad it doesn't explain anything else: How did he get whatever he 'caught'/what was it/why does it work so fast. Then we go to "Present Day Budapest". OK, was the opener in the past or the future? It turns out to be the past, of course, but for a minute it looks just as likely to be the nd of the movie moved to the beginning. Sorry, I should have paid closer attention, huh? Or maybe it's just badly done. Then a lot of confusion about the different jobs he's had in related fields, and finally a mention about how he should have died from the original experiment the n s a did on him. Aha! So the n s a and private industry got together to poison one of their top guys to watch the effects? He must have been one of the top guys, he's friends with the c e o of the Chemical company, for God sakes. Then there's the substance itself: Technically a poison, but it mutates in immune 'carriers', so we can have whatever we want; a poison, a disease, an allergic reaction, all very different things in real life. Magically, it's not contagious from one dying victim to another, only from the carrier. How convenient. Then there's the h a z m a t protocol: They jump into a situation without having any idea what's in store, or how prepare for it. Did the producers not have enough money to show a proper wash-down after the crew just left the scene of a deadly unknown substance? I kept thinking Hurt was going to die from bad cleanup technique, and the open scene would turn out to be the closer after all.

When a film starts with a man unintentionally killing his young family with an immediately-fatal virus within the first couple of minutes you know that A) you're in a world that bears only a passing resemblance to reality and B) you're probably going to wish you hadn't bothered watching it by the time the film is over. I started watching mostly because William Hurt is a quality actor (it's unfathomable to me why he would accept such a badly-written part in such a ludicrously told story) and also because I have a weakness for killer virus stories – even though this genre of film is rarely worth the effort. Even a relatively ambitious project like Mick Garris's TV adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand was disappointing in the extreme.Anyway, I soldiered on, and increasingly began feeling as if a creeping virus were taking over my own body. One that made me at first restless and then sleepy. After the film's prologue in golden California we are transported to the cold grey winter of Budapest, presumably because production costs are cheaper there. A lab worker (Peter Weller, virtually unrecognisable from his Robocop days) accidentally becomes infected with the virus but, like Hurt's character, is able to live for a week or so as a carrier while those he touches die within a minute of contact. Hurt shows up, looking a little geeky it has to be said, with long hair and no hairpiece, to at first lock horns with Natasha McElhone before they join forces to track down Weller (who, bizarrely, goes on the run with a large model airplane) with whom.Hurt shares an increasing affinity.Things get progressively sillier as the film blunders towards its daft climax, and we are left to (presumably) cheer two 'heroes' who gleefully infect a hardnosed government agent with the very virus they had been attempting to stop Weller from spreading. Weller and McElhone belong to that breed of second-string actors who live off the pickings those higher up the pecking order instantly dismiss, but William Hurt is clearly slumming here, and presumably only in it for the money – a fact which is almost as disappointing as this film.

For a change we have what could have been a good movie, I did like the premise, BUT some weak characterizations & poor sound recording hurts the overall impact. Wm Hurt & Peter Weller have done much better films & whoever the actress playing the reporter is,needs voice lessons. Without creating a spoiler I wish the toy submarine exploded in the water, It would of made the film less dull.rating a low **1/2 68/100 imdb 5

This movie is so bad, you almost feel contaminated by it. Actually, there is a strong sense of relief when it's over, relief that you can now put the cassette back in the rewinder and RUSH this back to the video rental store before it contaminates the rest of your video collection. I jokingly suggested when we rented it that it looked like the kind of film where William Hurt would "phone in" his performance. I meant that he would not be trying very hard. But lo and behold, in a huge number of scenes in this film, Bill Hurt is actually ON THE PHONE! Our realization of this irony was the only pleasure we derived from this confusing mess. The cinematography and editing are murky and befuddled, the story is chaotic, and the soundtrack is barely audible. There is a very slight resemblance to "Falling Down", but that film had a boldly disturbing story-line, great writing and acting, and an engaging soundtrack. "Contaminated Man" is just some kind of broken down old European tourist trap, and watching it is like driving along some unfamiliar back road in an unknown country where you don't speak the language in a steady rain just after nightfall as the windshield keeps fogging up. You get the picture? Don't get this one.