
Side Effects is the perfect response to Broken City and Promised Land, two films that offered great potential but drowned themselves in shallowness, eschewing dimension and complexity to make the bad guys really bad while taking their message as inherently superior. In short, they were two films that purported a moral they never got around to discussing. Side Effects does not.
And it is not largely because it’s not an “issue” film — it’s a thriller, and the mystery is compelling, the performances are convincing, and the end is satisfying for its distinct lack of finger wagging. Soderbergh keeps the story unceasingly human, and when the guilty party is revealed, their reasons and actions are sound. Names are given faces — Soderbergh does not hide behind the trope of a faceless evil corporation, as the trailer would let you believe.
Jude Law plays Dr. Jonathan Banks, a psychiatrist who takes it upon himself to treat the disturbed Emily (Rooney Mara) after she slams her car into the wall of a parking garage. Her husband Martin is recently paroled for fraud, and his return has sparked a suicidal turn in Emily. Banks puts her on a new drug, and things get much worse.
That’s about as far as I can go without spoiling anything– Banks gets embroiled in the consequences and tries to figure out what the Hell is going on.
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