Side Effects

Side Effects is the 2013 thriller from director Steven Soderbergh, starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones.


Synopsis: Emily (Mara) is depressed. Her big-shouldered husband (Tatum) went to prison for insider trading, and she lost her lux life. Even with his release from prison, she just cannot get happy. He wants to move to Texas to start a new business. Emily isn’t feeling it. So she drives her car into a wall.

At the emergency room, psychiatrist Dr. Banks (Law) treats her. She begins seeing him regularly. Dr. Banks prescribes all kinds of anti-depressants for her, but none of them do the trick. She has the urge to walk in front of a subway train. Not good. But we’re in luck! Dr. Banks is running a trial for a new anti-depressant medication, Ablixa, and getting paid $50,000 by a major pharmaceutical company. Emily can try this drug. It will make everything better. That’s what the Ablixa TV commercials say, anyway.

Uh-oh. One of the side effects of Ablixa is sleepwalking. Wouldn’t you know it, while Emily is cutting up a red bell pepper, her husband comes home, and she stabs him to death all over the wood flooring while in a trance. Then she goes to bed.

I guess Ablixa isn’t going to work either.

Emily is brought to trial. Dr. Banks confers with her previous psychiatrist, Dr. Victoria Siebert (Zeta-Jones, with severe hair and glasses). Emily is found not guilty by reason of insanity brought on by depression and Ablixa. Dr. Banks agrees to continue treating her.

Banks’ career and marriage suffer from the high profile case. So, why does he keep Emily as a patient? Because he believes there is more to this story!

Banks visits Emily and tells her he is giving her truth serum. She reacts to the drug, but does not confess. Guess what? Banks gave her a placebo. SHE IS FAKING! And Victoria is in on the ruse!

Banks outwits them both, making each believe the other can’t be trusted. Emily coughs up the entire story: Emily went to Victoria for treatment; both hated their husbands, and they hatched this convoluted caper.

There’s always a caper.

The two women became lovers and figured out a way to use Ablixa and pharmaceutical stock to become rich, get rid of their husbands (literally, in Emily’s case), and run away to live happily ever after. Tra la.

But no! Dr. Banks releases Emily, and she goes to see Victoria, wearing a wire. Victoria blabs away about the plan, and off she goes to prison. Banks has Emily readmitted to the hospital, drugs her up on a Thorazine cocktail, somehow gets the stock money, and lives happily ever after.



Review: Side Effects is one of those movies that fell apart for me. The first half, with its examination of our pharmaceutical culture, was fantastic. “Try Effexor. Try Zoloft. Doctor, I saw the commercial for Ablixa, and the people seem so happy. Give me a prescription for that.” Advertising prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies paying physicians to prescribe certain medications. Ablixa ink pens! I wanted a movie about the side effects of the influences of Big Pharma in Amercia, not a run of the mill thriller that twists and twists and twists again. We’ve seen that; we have seen that one million times. Oh, look, a twist to the twist to the original twist. How clever. Whoopee.



I’m not crazy about Rooney Mara in this film. Jude Law is delicious, and his face interests me, no matter what he’s doing. Zeta-Jones, meh. And Tatum? I don’t get the Tatum fascination at all.

A lot of reviewers compared this to Hitchcock. I don’t see it, maybe because it didn’t deliver what I wanted. I kind of felt like it didn’t deliver what it promised.



Fun random fact: Blake Lively from Gossip Girl was originally cast as Emily, but insisted on no nudity, so the role was recast with Mara. Also, this may be Soderbergh’s last film. That makes me sad.



MAB rating: Two and a half WUBs, because I enjoyed the first half of the move, and because of Jude Law’s yumminess.



Yes, I wrote this review with my Ablixa ink pen!

See you in my Netflix queue!