Side Effects (2013) * * *

Directed by:  Steven Soderbergh

Starring:  Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Channing Tatum

Side Effects is a thriller with no guns or chases, although there is a murder and the murderer appeared to be sleepwalking under the effects of a new anti-depressant.     Who is to blame?     Emily Taylor (Mara) stabbed her husband several times, but remembers nothing of it.     Her psychiatrist Jon Banks (Law) prescribed the medication Ablixa to help her with her suicidal tendencies, but if the drug is the issue, then he prescribed it.   Is he at fault?    Is the psychiatric profession at fault for creating a culture that pushes pills for profit?     Side Effects is about all of these issues and it is about none of them.     I thought I knew where Side Effects was going, but I was all the more satisfied when I realized I didn't.

The film starts as commodities trader Martin Taylor (Tatum) is released from prison after a four-year term for insider trading.     His wife Emily waited for him patiently, but the effects of their ordeal have left her depressed and suicidal.     Emily was unable to cope with the fact that she and Martin had the perfect life that was taken away when Martin went to prison.     Martin promises that he'll be starting up a new business and they will be prosperous again in no time.     Emily isn't so certain.  

After a suicide attempt in which Emily drove her car directly into a parking garage wall, she is hospitalized and placed under the care of Dr. Banks.     She begins visiting him and he prescribes various medications to relieve her gloom to no avail.     Dr. Banks reaches out to Emily's former psychiatrist Dr. Victoria Siebert (Zeta-Jones), whom Emily hadn't seen in years.     Siebert suggests Ablixa, which Dr. Banks prescribes.    One unfortunate side effect is sleepwalking, which Emily does to Martin's consternation.      During one episode, she stabs Martin with a knife and kills him.     She awakes the next morning horrified to learn she had stabbed her husband.     She remembers nothing about the incident, which shifts unwanted media focus to Dr. Banks.    

I won't go into too much further detail to avoid giving away important plot developments.     Side Effects is suspenseful without resorting to gunplay and car chases which are so prevalent in thrillers anymore.     Car chases haven't been suspenseful since Popeye Doyle chased down an elevated train in The French Connection.     The film works because it deals with its characters and what we think we know (or don't know) about them.     Rooney Mara (from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) has all of her hair and no goth makeup this time, but she is intensely sad, depressed, and hiding a secret or two perhaps.     It's difficult not to sympathize with a woman whose life was torn away from her and she was left alone to pick up the pieces.     Did she have an unconscious desire to kill?    Did the drug simply bring that out in her?   

Side Effects provides a solution, but no easy answers for anyone involved.     Things begin to look really bad for Dr. Banks as he loses his practice and is financially ruined in the aftermath of the media scrutiny into the case.     His wife leaves him, but not because the golden goose is no longer laying eggs.     Law's performance is tricky, yet it works.     He provides as much of a protagonist as can be expected under the circumstances.     As a shrink, he has been pushing drugs for so long that the human connection with his patients doesn't seem to be at the forefront.     The same could also be said for Dr. Siebert, who appears cool and distant.    These are not traits that a psychiatrist should have, but they are perfect for a drug pusher.    That is likely the point.