Aylmer to Zazzoo and Beyond: Side Effects

Side Effects
(2012 - February 8)
Crime | Drama | Thriller

106 min.

Rated: R Sexuality, nudity, violence and language. Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+ Read more
Grade: C+

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writer: Scott Z. Burns (screenplay)
Stars: Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, Jude Law | See full cast and crew

Side Effects is a provocative thriller about Emily and Martin (Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum), a successful New York couple whose world unravels when a new drug prescribed by Emily's psychiatrist (Jude Law) – intended to treat anxiety – has unexpected side effects.

Side Effects starts out with a promising diagnosis, an interesting premise but about 30 minutes it loses its potency and soon spins out of control with each little twist and turn of the plot vying to outdo the last one and the side effect is to render the story more and more ludicrous as it lumbers along to its eventual toxic overdose.

What would you do if your doctor asked you to be a guinea pig for an experimental drug to treat your particular troubling condition, all free of charge, would you do it?
How severe would the side effects have to be to turn you off, to make you say the risks are just too great?
What if you knew that a good result would be a real boost to your doctor’s career, would that sway your decision to participate?
Let's say you learned that pharmaceutical company was using you in a scheme to make mega profits?
Would you rather find drug-free solutions before submitting your body to elaborate chemistry experiments?
Exploring such questions might be present an intriguing setup for cinematic storytelling, what with all the stories we hear in the news about misguided corporate priorities, corruption, insider trading and greed that seems to drive the decisions of pharmaceutical companies. It could be the makings for an interesting if not a great film based on the subject. Unfortunately that's not what we got here.
If you are going to see Tatum Channing...blink a couple of times and you'll miss him, it's a Jude Law vehicle.

Synopsis
Via wikipedia

The first half of the film follows Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara), the 28 year old wife of Martin (Channing Tatum). Martin has just been released after serving a 4 year prison sentence for insider trading, and quickly attempts to regain his lost wealth. Shortly after Martin's release Emily, as if in a trance, drives her car into a concrete wall in an apparent suicide attempt. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) is a psychiatrist assigned by the state to her case and while he fears for her safety, he agrees to release her from the hospital as long as she frequently attends sessions with him. Emily tries a series of anti-depressant medications but they fail to work. Jonathan then talks to Emily's previous psychiatrist Victoria (Catherine Zeta-Jones), whom Emily stopped seeing after she lost her health insurance; Victoria suggests that Jonathan put Emily on the drug Ablixa. Jonathan hesitates putting Emily on the experimental drug until she attempts suicide a second time by almost jumping onto a subway track before a policeman stops her. The medication works and Emily seems to regain her normal life with Martin, except that she begins to have severe sleep-walking episodes. Jonathan monitors her and her case appears to be solved until one night she stabs Martin to death while sleep-walking.

Emily is brought to trial after a thorough investigation. It is revealed that Ablixa is known to have sleep-walking side-effects in patients, and Jonathan fights for Emily's innocence. Jonathan is criticized publicly for fumbling Emily's case and is accused of taking too large of a work load and consulting for drug trials because his wife had recently lost her job and he was unwilling to remove his son from an expensive private school. Emily eventually agrees to an insanity plea deal; she'll be declared not guilty as long as she is held in a mental institution until cleared by a psychiatrist.

The second half of the film follows Jonathan as his life falls apart. Due to the bad publicity of the case, his partners leave him, he is removed from the clinical trials, and the District Attorney will no longer consult with him. As he cannot believe he did anything wrong, he begins to investigate the case, looking for any angle to prove he did nothing wrong -- even conspiracies -- and he begins to find bizarre circumstances in the case. For example, Emily had clearly activated her car's safety mechanisms just before her first suicide attempt, Victoria had been the only psychiatrist that reported the sleep-walking side effects of Ablixa, and the coverage from Emily's murder trial had caused a massive drop in the stock price of Ablixa and a large rise in the stock price of its primary competitor. Jonathan believes that Emily and Victoria have conspired together and he interviews Emily after administering what he claims is a truth serum. Emily behaves as if she's groggy from the drug -- which unbeknownst to her was actually a placebo -- and this confirms Jonathan's suspicions.

When Jonathan confronts Victoria with this information, she mails photographs to Jonathan's wife implying he had an affair with Emily; Jonathan's wife and son leave him. Jonathan manages to turn Emily and Victoria against each other by using legal means to prevent contact between them, then lies to them, making each believe that her partner had sold her out to the authorities. Desperate for Jonathan to save her, Emily reveals the workings of the plot to him: Emily enjoyed the rich life and hated Martin for causing her to lose it. She specifically went to Victoria for counseling as she, too, had been abandoned by her husband, and the two began a relationship. They taught each other about the workings of the financial world and faking psychiatric disorders. They then went to elaborate means to fake the side effects of the drug in order to manipulate the stock prices of Ablixa's manufacturer and its competitor.

Jonathan agrees to release Emily from the psychiatric ward under his care. She immediately re-unites with Victoria, who admits details of the plot to Emily -- who is wearing a wire. Victoria is arrested for conspiracy to commit murder, but Emily, due to double jeopardy, can no longer be held criminally responsible for her part in Martin's murder. As retaliation for Emily's part in the plot, Jonathan prescribes her a series of unnecessary drugs with serious side effects under the threat she'll be sent back to the ward if she refuses. Angered by this, she goes ballistic, which is seen by police agents outside, and Emily is sent back to the ward. In the final scene, Jonathan is shown having regained his normal life and Emily in the ward, staring blankly out the window, as she is asked how she is feeling. She replies, "Better. Much Better." It is noted that the background music in this last scene is the same music that Emily plays out loud earlier when she fakes her first sleepwalking episode, suggesting that she may be once again faking side effects of her medication.