Side Effect // DVD Review

If a film has a twist, but the twist is in the middle of the film, then it’s not really a twist, is it? It’s a turn; a waste of half a film. Imagine if 45 minutes into The Sixth Sense, we’d found out that Bruce Willis was dead and the rest of the film was a buddy comedy, or if half way through Citizen Kane we learned that ‘Rosebud’ was the name of Kane’s childhood sledge, which was then sold to the Jamaican bobsled team. That’s the kind of now-you-see-me, now-you-still-see-me-but-I’m-wearing-a-hat effect that Side Effects pulls, but it’s a bad idea. And it’s done badly. Shame, because I was really looking forward to this. I’m a fan of Steven Soderbergh - a filmmaker of enormous skill and versatility. He’s expertly tackled stylish com-romps (Oceans Eleven), intelligent issue-studies (Traffic) and realistic disaster thrillers (Contagion) among many others. If anyone could crash two films together and make it work, it’s him. The problem here is that neither of the films is any good. One is a slow-moving - but superficial - study of America’s addiction to anti-depressants; one is a ham-fisted crime-thriller. Adrift on this fickle tide is a bewildered cast. The never-impressive Jude Law does his usual wide-eyed twat-in-a-twat-shop while Channing Tatum frowns and Zeta Jones pouts. Rooney Mara also frowns. But then pouts. However, if this sounds like your kinda thing, you’re not alone. Very respectable Rotten-Tomatoes and Metacritic scores suggests that most people really liked this mess. They’re wrong, obviously, but I thought I’d mention it. For me, though, Side Effects is half Wise, half Garfunkel. Jay Freeman