Side Effects (2013)

Emily (Rooney Mara) is clinically depressed. She has been seeing a psychologist (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Her white collar criminal husband (Channing Tatum) is getting out of jail, which leads to more depression. Having failed a suicide attempt, Emily is placed on medication and does the unthinkable. At this point the film goes into an odd mystery/thriller, one where everyone knows who done it. Just when you think you have it figured out, it twists, having more twists than Taylor Swift having break-up songs. Jude Law plays Dr. Jonathan Banks, a man caught in the middle of all of this.I didn't know what to expect going into this feature. It is best not to read the reviews as it is impossible to write anything without giving away too much of the plot. If you like mystery thrillers with twists and clues that hurt your head like a Hitchcock masterpiece, this one will fit the bill. If you know anyone who takes meds for depression, then you can enjoy the film on a different level.Parental Guide: F-bombs, sex, very brief nudity (Rooney Mara)

..instead of a passably acceptable timewaster. It's a shame the director, so well known for emotionally involving films, decided to distance the characters and the story itself so far from the audience that the film is just an unemotional and uninvolving letdown.By the time Side Effects gets where it should have gone much earlier, the only interesting character has so little screen time that she seems as if she is in a different, better film, like Malice or Final Analysis, as those films are practically textbooks on how to make this type of movie into a genuine genre thriller.See it for what it could have been, and then wonder at the missed opportunity and how a different director could have handled such a great, twisty mystery.

Rooney Mara is Emily Taylor, a depressed graphic artist who is married to Martin(Channing Tatum), a recently released from prison Wall Street con artist. She comes upon a psychiatrist, Jonathan Banks(Jude Law) after a suicide attempt via car crash into a wall at a parking garage. He prescribes some anti depressants with the side effect of sleep walking. This has unfortunate consequences for her newly jail free husband. What follows is an interesting series of twists and turns which feel like an extended Twilight Zone episode. Law and Rooney are excellent in their roles and I did not guess the ending. The drug industry takes a well deserved hit for their irresponsible actions regarding overused and obscenely profitable medications. A solid 7.5/10.

There is a moment - perhaps 20 minutes into Steven Soderbergh's "Side Effects" - when it seems that we are watching a film which ponders on how society deems it desirable and necessary for basically well-meaning, morally virtuous and clever psychiatrists (such as Jude Law's character Jonathan Banks) to suggest radical changes in behaviour (and the possibility of the titular "side effects") - achieved using the highly lucrative output of (and under a degree of pressure imposed by) "Big Pharma", on the basis of perhaps just 45 minutes a week of contact with sad and confused and needy patients such as Emily Taylor (played by Rooney Mara).Given such a very challenging thesis, plus the acting talents of Mara (very convincing as the patient) and Law (who captures the film from the moment he appears), it seems that we have something highly interesting and thought-provoking to deal with. All the more so as things go wrong, and Dr Banks rapidly finds himself losing all the allies, reputation, stability and forms of support he thought he could take for granted - as rather a pillar of society. Pillar he may be, but resting on completely shifting sands.It thus comes as a minor annoyance to have that film and that content taken away once it has seemed to be introduced and established ... in the name of an also-interesting, but certainly lesser/more predictable conspiracy thriller plot in which the hitherto-minor character of second psychiatrist Dr Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones) suddenly comes much more to the fore.At that point none of the parties seen to be playing games with one another emerge as very much smelling of roses, and this leaves a surprisingly bitter taste.None of this takes away fully from a film that is intriguing and taut and interesting and well-acted throughout, if subject to the aforementioned mammoth change of plot direction that is certainly a bit of an acquired taste, and not altogether justified.