Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Steven Soderbergh, Roadshow Entertainment.
This is one psychological thriller that’s far from Soderbergh’s most memorable offering, but it is well-paced with an engaging storyline. It is set in the financial world of New York where pharmaceutical experimentation and marketing lend new elements to this film.
The life of a successful couple, Emily (Rooney Mara) and Martin Taylor (ChanningTatum) unravels when a new drug meant to treat anxiety is prescribed by psychiatrist Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) – and ends up with unexpected side effects.
She’s been under care before, with a shrink named Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones), but Banks thinks Emily may get good results from a new drug. Meanwhile, a drug company has paid him $50,000 to study it during the licensing period
Performances are solid, particularly from Law as the empathetic but embattled analyst.
Thomas Newman’s haunting musical score is significant, underlying, never deafening and an integral part of the movie. This spellbinding spin about big pharma and mental health, unkindly leaves you hankering for that one last fix.
There’s an ability to simultaneously be afraid and creepy. Soderbergh’s film manages to instill fascination, mingled with fear, in an almost intravenous way.
The film, at first, however, looked as if it was going to make a socially conscious comment about the corrupt influence of drug companies, but it dwindles into an artificial provider of thrills.
