FILM: Side Effects

 I enjoyed this suspenseful, smart, well-plotted film directed by Stephen Soderbergh. Jude Law plays caring, committed psychiatrist to depressed young rich Rooney Mara, whose husband, Channing Tatum, is being released from jail for insider trading.  Catherine Zeta-Jones is fun to see playing a psychiatrist he consults to help his patient.

The first half of the film depicts the pervasive efforts of the drug industry to market and position new drugs with the medical establishment as well as the public.  It's chilling as our pawn status as drug shopping consumers is revealed - and Rooney commits a dreadful crime while taking a new depression medication that has some -of course, side effects.

Everyone sues everyone, but that's not it - the film's second half twists downward to depths of manipulative traps and plots laid by - I won't tell - the characters.  The psychiatrist, well meaning, goes all mean and ruthless once he loses his wife, his practice, and his reputation and so he too, plots a revenge.  And it's a grim, well designed plan, that flips our sympathy for him and our disgust with Mara head over heels.

The fashion in chic murder thrillers these days seems be - no good guys - just amoral,  pathetic, selfish manipulators, bullies, predators, preyed upon dynamics in which flawed creatures struggle through their crime and its consequences, arriving at closure, but little justice.  But it's deeply entertaining stuff.  I just can't resist trying to figure out who did it, and how.