“Side Effects” marks the (supposed) last theatrical output
by the commercially and critically popular director, Steven Soderbergh (“Ocean’s
Eleven”, “Traffic”, “Sex Lies and Videotape”).
Though he has been threatening his departure for over two years now, his
creative flame seems to be burning brighter before it goes it out. Between September 2011 and now he has
released four very different films that have one similar interest; taking on
low-brow, genre material and classing it up in that cool, laid-back and
somewhat-detached Soderberghian way.
With
“Contagion” he turned a traditional disaster movie into a sociological allegory
about how the media and governments deal with international catastrophe.
Likewise, “Magic Mike” tricked many ladies into the theater with the promise of
sleazy male beefcake, but instead gave them a downbeat movie about the current
economic crisis. “Side Effects”, his latest film, seems to reverse this trend
by setting up the groundwork for a politically taut, procedural deconstruction
of Big Pharma, but lurking within the picture is a unabashedly twisted
B-movie—and I mean that in a good way.
The
movie begins by introducing us into the troubled mind of Emily Taylor (Roony
Mara) as she begins to suffer from severe depression after her husband
(Channing Tatum) is released from prison for insider trading. When she seeks
the counsel of a court-ordered shrink named Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), she is
then prescribed a new, experimental antidepressant called Ablixa. At first
everything seems fine, until she begins act out in strange episodes of sleep
walking and random violence that she has no recollection of. After a particularly
bad incident she’s put into psychological observation and the negative media
attention is pointed towards Dr. Banks, since he prescribed the drug without
knowing the details of its side effects…Or that’s what the movie would lead you
to believe it’s about.
This is
a somewhat difficult movie to review because so much of its joy is predicated
on its twisting and shifting plot. Every
time you think you know where the story is going or you think you know what
kind of movie you’re watching, it deflects your expectations and throws another
strange flavor into the stew. The first
half of the film establishes it’s characters masterfully and the joint
narrative seems to be split right down the middle, bouncing back and forth from
the complicated perspectives of Roony and Jude—both giving one of their best
performances yet. When things start to
complicate and the pressure starts to build, these characters begin to act out
of their predictable state and the stakes are raised into a feverishly
entertaining frenzy.
“Side
Effects” essentially gives you two movies; one that’s really intelligent and
slick but seems to lack a sense of cinematic immediacy and one that’s wild and
pulpy but isn’t very smart. Depending on your disposition, these two flawed
halves will either cancel each other out or blend to make a better whole.
Coming out of the theater I might have thought it was the first thing but after
days of reflection I feel a little closer to latter. Nevertheless it’s a well-made, well-acted,
interesting throw back to something like the RKO noirs of the 40’s, Hitchcock’s
wrong-man mysteries of the 50’s and 60’s or even the sex-thrillers that Joe Eszterhas
(“Basic Instinct”, “Jade”) would have
written in the late 80’s and early 90’s. What I mean to say is it’s the type of
movie you don’t see any more and though it isn’t as ambiguous as it originally
suggests or as subtle as I might have preferred, I could definitely appreciate the
slow-building madness of its intentions.
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Feb-2013
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