Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Side Effects

This is topic Side Effects in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 03-02-2013, 07:14 PM:

Stephen Soderbergh's Side Effects is a film in two parts: it begins as a commentary on the ethics of pharmaceuticals and their use in treating mental illness and ends up a murder mystery thriller. After her husband's release from incarceration for insider trading, Emily (Rooney Mara) quickly plunges into depression. When her psychologist (Jude Law) places her on a promising new experimental drug, she unconsciously murders her husband (Channing Tatum). Questions are raised over who the real murderer is: Emily, the drug, or her psychologist who prescribed it.

Side Effects operates successfully on a number of levels: questioning the ruthlessness of pharmaceutical corporations, the corruption of professionals by such corporations, the ethical treatment of mental illness, and how the public spotlight can distort truths in it's ruthless pursuit of a scapegoat. These worthy themes, however, are cheapened somewhat by the films "murder thriller" second half which gets itself so tied in it's own knots that it requires a confessional from the main perpetrator in order to make sense of it. This is a cop out for a script which, although clever, is not articulated as well as it ought to be.

Rooney Mara is proving to be quite the heavy hitter in Hollywood albeit one who commendably shuns the fame and glamour which accompanies such status. Mara does "vulnerable" very well - it's what made for her exemplary performance as Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's The Girl in the Dragon Tattoo and also in The Social Network - and her performance here is no exception. It's a complex form of "vulnerable" which incites both sympathy and intrigue in the viewer. Performances from Jude Law, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones are excellent also in supporting roles.

Side Effects is an otherwise smart film dumbed down by an overly convoluted second half but it possesses sufficient merits in terms of its performances and ethical questions to justify a viewing.

7.5 out of 10