Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) has been losing a battle with
depression, and when her stockbroker husband (Channing Tatum) is released from
prison for insider trading she attempts to commit suicide. Her new therapist
(Jude Law) prescribes anti-depressants that have adverse side effects resulting
in tragedy.
All the buildup to the tragic event that takes place nearly
45 minutes into the film was expertly handled, well written and seriously
frightening when you consider how many people mix prescriptions and the random
side effects that can result from doing so. Writer Scott Z. Burns clearly did
some research into this topic and is shows in the final product. Where he
falters is in the last half of the script where the story switches gears and
turns into a generic investigative thriller with multiple twists thrown in to
keep things interesting. I saw every one of these twists coming and in the end
I was wholly disappointed by the film that had just played out before me.
The acting is fine by most of the cast, especially Rooney
Mara as the manically depressed Emily in the two acts. I felt sorry for her,
wanted her to get her shit together and pull thorough regardless of what ends up
happening to her. But in the last half of the film when her character shifts
she goes into her A Nightmare on Elm
Street mode and sleepwalks through the remaining scenes. Channing Tatum was
halfway decent as her husband Martin, but he doesn’t get a whole lot of
screentime. Jude Law is the most successful in the core cast as psychiatrist
Dr. Banks. I believed he was a shrink for the moment he walked on screen and
even though he swings over to a devious place as the movie pushes on I bought
into it. Why he doesn’t get more high profile movies is beyond me.
Out of the entire cast, the worst of
the lot is definitely Catherine Zeta-Jones as Emily’s ex-psychiatrist Dr.
Siebert. She’s been slacking off lately and this is another film to add to the
ever increasing list of movies she’s half assed. Her scenes are so bad that I
found them uncomfortable to watch. She needs to get her shit together or she’s
going to turn into the female Nicolas Cage.
Steven Soderbergh is one of those directors who I feel makes
films I’m either going to love or I’m going to hate. For every Contagion there’s a Haywire. For every Ocean’s 11
there’s an Ocean’s 12. For every Traffic there’s a The Informant!. Side Effects
is one of those rare movies on his resume that I both like and dislike in equal
measure. Like I said, the first half is phenomenally gripping and then it goes
in another direction that didn’t work for me. I do find him to be a talented
and highly intelligent director who is willing to venture into any genre to
tell a story (he needs to make a full-on horror film before he “retires”). It’s
just that sometimes he misses the mark completely and falls flat on his face. I
will give him props for trying to make this a great picture from start to
finish, but the script worked against him and that never happened. He needs to
stop reusing the same troupe of actors for every film. One of the reasons I
think Zeta-Jones gets away with subpar performances is because she knows
Soderbergh will just cast her again regardless.
I’m trying my best to not go into spoiler territory so you
will have to excuse the brevity of this review. I don’t want to ruin it for
those with an interest in seeing this flick. Just know that if you have grown
tiresome of the Shyamalan-style plot twists and audience manipulation that
comes with it you might end up just as let down as I was with Side Effects. I
was just looking forward to a nice, straightforward thriller and I got
something else. Maybe my expectations betrayed me? I don’t think so. I just
wanted a good movie and I didn’t get one – I received half of one.
2 out of 5
The middle third of the film may be a bit difficult to follow at times, but the effort pays off massively. Nice review.
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