Erin Brockovich, Ocean's Eleven, Traffic, Che...all great and completely varied films directed by Steven Soderbergh, who has apparently announced Side Effects as the last film he will make before retiring. No pressure then...
The film's story focuses on the use of prescription drugs and the effects they can have on a person's mind....whilst I'm aware that this sounds like a pretty bland plot for an exciting film, the plot is deceiving, as the film is more focused on swerving the audience with various twists and turns, forcing us to play detective but ultimately tricking us at every corner. A psychological mammoth of a film. Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara of Dragon Tattoo fame) opens the film waiting for her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) to be released from prison. Emily and Martin endure a fractured relationship upon his release: she is depressed and tries to kill herself, whilst he wants to go back to his old ways of crime. Enter Jude Law as the calm-mannered psychologist Jonathan, who prescribes Emily drugs to help her with depression, using new drugs on the market, which have, as the title suggests, some sort of apparent side effects to them.....
To delve any more into the plot would ruin it, let's just say the story takes massive swerves and the ending of the film resembles nothing of the initial plot which I've described above. It's sophisticated, well- made, and has a slow pace to it which creates a sort of surreal nature to the events of the film. Jude Law stands out as the cool psychologist with everything at his feet, his character holds the film together with the gripping nature of his performance, whilst the presence of Catherine Zeta-Jones also ends up benefiting the film (for once, some may argue). It is a strange film, it has a style that a few people may not enjoy, but I really liked it, it was very similar to Shutter Island, and by the end of the film all the guesses I made about where the conclusion was going were completely wrong, and that's a credit to it's originality. Highly recommended.
8/10
The film's story focuses on the use of prescription drugs and the effects they can have on a person's mind....whilst I'm aware that this sounds like a pretty bland plot for an exciting film, the plot is deceiving, as the film is more focused on swerving the audience with various twists and turns, forcing us to play detective but ultimately tricking us at every corner. A psychological mammoth of a film. Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara of Dragon Tattoo fame) opens the film waiting for her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) to be released from prison. Emily and Martin endure a fractured relationship upon his release: she is depressed and tries to kill herself, whilst he wants to go back to his old ways of crime. Enter Jude Law as the calm-mannered psychologist Jonathan, who prescribes Emily drugs to help her with depression, using new drugs on the market, which have, as the title suggests, some sort of apparent side effects to them.....
To delve any more into the plot would ruin it, let's just say the story takes massive swerves and the ending of the film resembles nothing of the initial plot which I've described above. It's sophisticated, well- made, and has a slow pace to it which creates a sort of surreal nature to the events of the film. Jude Law stands out as the cool psychologist with everything at his feet, his character holds the film together with the gripping nature of his performance, whilst the presence of Catherine Zeta-Jones also ends up benefiting the film (for once, some may argue). It is a strange film, it has a style that a few people may not enjoy, but I really liked it, it was very similar to Shutter Island, and by the end of the film all the guesses I made about where the conclusion was going were completely wrong, and that's a credit to it's originality. Highly recommended.
8/10