This is Devon --NEW ON DVD: Side Effects (Cert 15, 101 mins, Entertainment One, Thriller/Romance, also available to buy DVD £17.99/Blu-ray £19.99)
Starring: Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Channing Tatum, Vinessa Shaw.
MOUSEY office worker Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) is crippled with anxiety about the impending release of her jailbird husband, Martin (Channing Tatum) – both pictured – who has served four years for insider trading.
"Every afternoon, it's like this poisonous fog bank rolling in on my mind," Emily explains to top psychiatrist Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), who prescribes a new medication called Ablixa to calm Emily's nerves. Soon after, in a drug-induced haze, the wife commits an unspeakable act and as the media swarms, attention turns to Jonathan's culpability for supplying the pills.
Faced with the prospect of losing his medical licence, Jonathan investigates Ablixa, aided by Emily's former shrink, Dr Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones).
Touted as Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh's final project in the director's chair, Side Effects is a lean psychological thriller about our reliance on prescription medication to smooth every emotional wrinkle. The film is built on the rock-solid foundations of Scott Z Burns's script, which repeatedly pulls the rug from under us just as we begin to think we know what is going on.
Plot strands become deliciously tangled and there's undeniable pleasure watching the characters try in vain to wriggle free from the complex web of lies. Law plays his role as a pawn in a deadly game with restraint, while Mara delivers another mesmerising performance after her Oscar nomination for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Soderbergh's cool direction oozes style, navigating the hairpin plot twists with aplomb, leaving characters' fates hanging in the balance so we're never entirely sure if anyone will emerge from the melee unscathed. Reported by This is 2 hours ago.