Side Effects. A review.
One of the side effects of making a lot of movies without seeming to focus too much on them is that they loose impact. There is a really good story lurking around inside this movie, but it never really seemed to escape to my mind. If this is going to be Soderbergh’s last movie, as he suggests, it is ending his career with rather a whimper than a bang.
It was very hard to get over excited by the arc of the movie or by any of its four stars, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, Jude Law or Catherine Zita-Jones. Everything was a muted as the color palette. There was little to dislike but no synergistic benefits from any of the elements and no individual stand outs.
The basic idea of ‘Side effects may include murder’ for a depression med is a nice one. However this is a very convoluted path, to it’s final and none to surprising ending. In fact, a few surprises would have been very welcome along the entire journey. There were no ‘gotcha’ visual moments and not really any great ‘gotcha’ moments in the storytelling. I won’t say that the movie was on thorozine, but it kinda seemed that way….
I hope Soderbergh does decide to remake his own early ‘flop’ Kafka— it was an interesting story that never quite made it out of the directors mind. Of course, we could all just stream Soderbergh’s ‘Sex, Lies and Videotape’ &’Traffic’ and it might well prove to still be the highlights of his career. While ‘Magic Mike’ had is fans the only remaining bullet in Soderbergh’s directorial gun that might hit a bullseye for me is ‘Behind the Candelabra.’ Which looks like surprisingly good and committed fun.
REMARKABLE MAGIC 
With the Soderbergh touch, of slightly close and tilted camera angles and fresh-take on the thriller genre that only this versatile director could deliver, if this truly is his final film, he will be sorely missed. Good review.