“Side Effects” Is More
Than a Medical Thriller
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Ever read those warnings on pill bottles? Or listen to those TV
commercials for prescription drugs? The potential side effects are pretty
frightening. Especially when they say, “Death May Occur.”
That’s one of the taglines of a new thriller called “Side Effects,” now
playing at the Tropic Cinema.
It’s directed by Steven Soderbergh, but blink and you might think
Hitchcock.
This nifty little film starts off as a medical thriller, but switches
gears to become a neo-noir murder mystery with more twists and turns than a
ball of twine.
We have a handsome couple, Martin and Emily Taylor (Channing Tatum and
Rooney Mara). However, she has much to be depressed about, her husband having disrupted
their upscale lifestyle when he got sent to prison for insider trading. But
he’s out now and their life seems to be getting back on track … until Emily
attempts suicide by crashing her car into a wall. That gets her assigned to a
psychiatrist, one Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law). When antidepressants don’t
seem to work, the good doctor consults with Emily’s previous shrink, Dr. Victoria
Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones). They decide to put her on a new drug called
Ablixa, although its side effects are not entirely known. Like sleepwalking
being one of them. Murder another.
There are trials, insanity pleas, ruined
reputations, double crosses, skullduggery, illicit romances, false accusations,
and (whew!) justice in the end.
No need to go into details. Unraveling that ball
of twine is part of the fun of seeing the movie.
Director Steven Soderbergh (he gave us “Out of
Sight,” “Traffic,” and “Erin Brockovich,” as well as fun capers like those “Ocean
Eleven” movies) offers up this tribute to … Hitchcock? No, “Fatal Attraction”
was his model. “I watched that a lot,”
says Soderbergh. “That’s
a very well-directed movie. Adrian Lyne knew exactly what he was doing. One of
the few, to my mind, interesting aspects of the eighties were these
psychological thrillers that popped up. I don’t know why they stopped being
made.”
Soderbergh has directed 26 films since his 1989
debut with “sex, lies, and videotape” —
the movie often credited with kick-starting the indie-film revolution. He was
only 26 at the time.
Not only directing but often editing and shooting
his own films, he has been quite a chameleon, jumping from genre to genre. In
“Side Effects,” he more or less does that within a single movie.
Why did he undertake this twists-and-turns murder
mystery set in the world of prescription medicines? “I just liked the idea of
making a thriller as I near the twilight of my career!” says Soderbergh. The
bald, bespectacled director is turning 50 and has announced his retirement from
filmmaking in order to paint.
Our loss as moviegoers.
srhoades@aol.com
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