Side Effect

Wonder why Steven Soderbergh’s last cinematic effort (he said to have retired from making movies. His official last, ‘Behind the Candelabra’ is a TV movie) did not do well in the box office. I found it terrific, perhaps a little dark, a little too real — dealing with financial irregularities and volatile world of medicines. There are lots of medical thrillers, like ‘The Fugitive’, where the medical part is just a Mcguffin. But, Soderbergh takes his background very seriously, here, as he did in another medical thriller, ‘Contagion’. Perhaps that’s the reason. Anther reason is perhaps, Soderbergh offers no redemption for his character. The lead characters show no remorse for their actions, and the audiences find it very difficult to empathize with them. And, given the fact how the narrative has been structured, they also feel cheated if they were rooting for the film’s lost protagonist, a marvellous Rooney Mara.



Side Effects is a 2013 American psychological thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh from a screenplay written by Scott Z. Burns. The film stars Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Channing Tatum. The film concerns the ramifications of an event following a young woman being prescribed antidepressant drugs, in particular the fictional new drug Ablixa (alipazone). To promote the movie, a realistic, but phony, website for Ablixa was created, and Jude Law answered questions by email. Side Effects was released in the United States on February 8, 2013.
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