Side Effects is an intriguing film starring Jude Law as mental health practitioner Jonathan Banks. He treats a young woman named Emily (Rooney Mara - aka the English-speaking Girl with a Dragon Tattoo) who's husband Martin (Channing Tatum) has recently been released from prison after being convicted for some sort of white collar crime. After she attempts suicide she is placed on a series of different medicines that are designed to help her fight her depression. These seem to be making a positive impact on her life, but they have the side effect of making her sleepwalk. Then something bad happens.
A quick aside before we continue. Why is it that many people in cinemas are unable to spot when something weird is about to happening despite having countless visual and audio clues presented to them? You would think people these days would be so well-attuned to the visual tricks that cinema and TV play on us that everyone would be able to spot what's happening from a mile off, but I guess some people don't pay attention. The moment when something bad happened was greeted in the auditorium by sharp intakes of breath from the amassed Readingites. So despite the sudden change to shaky-cam, the close-up of a knife and the change in music telegraphing it, many people were still shocked by something bad happening. Is this evidence that when watching films (and any moving images for that matter) people aren't really watching, rather they're just allowing the images to happen in front of them? I guess people really do turn their brains off when they go into the cinema. Or maybe I think too much.
Anyway, back to the film. Before the bad thing happens Side Effects looks like it's going to be a deep psychological drama about mental illness. For example there are a few weird camera angles which I think are designed to try to convey what's going on inside Emily's head and make the film look like it's reaching for some sort of artistic angle. There's a lot of soul-searching going on from all involved as Dr Banks tries to work out what it is about Emily's life that's making her depressed. After the bad thing happens the film becomes a procedural crime drama as the police and courts get involved and we get dragged into a story about the evils of big-pharma. Then it becomes something else entirely; which is where things got a little weird, the film stopped taking itself seriously and the flaws crept in.
After an opening act that makes the film appear to be about one thing, then a second act that turns the film into a legal drama, the final act comes along and starts twisting things up. I'm not going to drop any spoilers here, but it drifts into Chinatown territory where everything you thought up till now isn't the whole truth, and something else is really going on. This is fine, but at the same time the film slides into cheesy cliché and has a bizarre test-screen feel to its ending. Imagine if at the end of Usual Suspects instead of Keyser Söze vanishing into the aether "And like that... he's gone"; the police all run out of the interrogation room, spot him slowly getting away, arrest him, and the final scene is of a grinning Chazz Palminteri telling the incarcerated Keyser Söze "I told you I was cleverer then you didn't it?". Wouldn't the film instantly lose its cult status? You probably wouldn't even remember it now nearly 20 years after release. That's sort of how I feel about Side Effects. The film had the potential to drag Jude Law's character kicking and screaming through a Hitchcockian mystery a la North by Northwest, then at the end throw a twist in the faces of him and the audiences that would leave us all gagging in bewilderment. Instead for some reason the writers decided it would be better if we had some out of character titillation and then the bad guys all got their comeuppance.
None of this would be an issue if the film wasn't any good to start with, but because there are so many good things about Side Effects I feel like it's a good script wasted. Was the ending adjusted after a screen test maybe? Was it darker / more mysterious in the original screenplay? This isn't information I've been unable to find in a brief internet search. Perhaps more will come to light in months to come. More likely though this film will be forgotten about quicker than anyone can be bothered to find out what went wrong - it ain't no Usual Suspects.
Despite me sounding like a slightly disappointed reviewer, I would still recommend that people go and see Side Effects. Rooney Mara has to channel a lot of different mental states at various points in the film and is very good at doing so with more than a little realism. It also has the rare honour of being an American mainstream film starring a British actor who retains his accent and isn't evil! Plus the story itself is an absorbing mystery. So in conclusion, go and watch Side Effects, but don't be surprised if the finale has you thinking "Seriously? That's the ending?".
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