Everyone has heard the end of a drug commercial where a monotone-voiced man speeds through the list of side effects from a new antidepressant. He says, “Some common side effects are headaches, nausea, insomnia, hair loss and low sex drive.” What he doesn’t include in the list is murdering your husband.  

“Side Effects,” directed by Steven Soderbergh (director of the “Ocean’s Eleven” series) and written by Scott Burns, has everything you would expect from a psychological thriller and nothing you would expect from a Channing Tatum movie, due to the fact that he’s killed off near the beginning. Jude Law and Rooney Mara were fantastic and believable as always, while Catherine Zeta-Jones came off a little hammy.

The movie follows the aftermath of Emily (Mara) killing her husband (Tatum) under the influence of the antidepressant that her psychiatrist Jonathan Banks (Law) prescribed to her. Consequentially, Banks’ life falls apart over criticism for prescribing her the drug. He makes it his goal to vindicate his actions and prove that the drug was not the problem. The only complaint that I have with Law was that he just didn’t seem all that distraught when his family left him. Maybe he didn’t like them that much.

After watching the film, I wasn’t surprised to see that Burns also wrote “Contagion.” Like “Contagion,” most of the movie has the same feel as watching a movie trailer. The scenes seem to skip around, leaving you hoping that there will be a moment of clarity. I was immediately interested in the storyline of the movie that I read before seeing it; however, I was surprised at my feelings of indifference for the plight of the characters. When it came down to it, I didn’t really care who went to jail.

What I was interested in was the health care issue addressed. Discussing kickbacks received by doctors for prescribing drugs can be a sticky topic, but it is relevant. It is never settling to walk into a doctor’s office and just happen to be prescribed the same drug that is on the wall posters and all the ink pens in the office.

The movie not only brought feelings of doubt about our health care system but also our legal system. They just couldn’t seem to figure how who was to blame.  Law had to be the unkempt, losing-his-mind vigilante, running around to piece together the mystery, to no judicial avail. In the end, Law quite literally has to prescribe a dose of revenge in pill form.  

I think the movie is worth the matinée price. It delivers some suspense, plenty of good acting and a hot lesbian make-out scene.