Side Effects
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 3.0
A troubled woman (Rooney Mara) - with a long history of mental illness - is treated by a psychiatrist (Jude Law) who prescribes for her a new antipsychotic drug which may have terrible side effects (hence the title!). Though I rag on Soderbergh's output a lot, I find this to be a taut, dare-I-say proto-Hitchcockian thriller with plenty of twists - it's best to go into this one cold and follow along. Some suspension of disbelief is definitely required, but for the most part I found it to be smart and the way Law - himself a flawed but dedicated therapist - wiggles away from trouble is fun to watch. Mara needs to be careful she doesn't get consistently typecast as a crazy person but Law's grace-under-pressure reminds me why he's one of the best actors of his generation. The quote about past behavior dictating future behavior should be permanently engraved in everyone's minds as it is rarely wrong.
