'Side Effects,' an intriguing thriller

Seven Soderbergh's latest movie (and possibly his last) proves involving right up until its less-than-credible last act.

Director Steven Soderbergh has said that the thriller Side Effects will be his last big-screen venture. The 50-year-old, Academy Award-winning director recently told New York Magazine that he plans to spend much of his time painting. Soderbergh didn't rule out theater or a television series, but said that he wouldn't continue as a filmmaker while he felt as if he were "running in place."

In place or not, Soderbergh certainly has been running; he has made 26 features since rocking and transforming the independent film world with 1989's Sex, Lies, and Videotape. As it progressed, Soderbergh's career seemed to divide between star-driven mainstream movies and more idiosyncratic fare. He has had franchise success (the Oceans Eleven movies), won a best-director Oscar for Traffic (2000), and challenged commercial wisdom with Che (2008), a four-hour, two part look at the revolutionary life of Che Gueverra. Most recently, he scored a box-office victory with Magic Mike, an upbeat look at the world of male strippers.

Intriguing and deftly made, Side Effects doesn't always tell the most believable of stories, but it's easy to overlook plausibility issues, right up until the movie's unfortunate and less-than-credible last act.

It may be stretching the point, but Side Effects struck me as a middle-ground helping of Soderbergh, a movie lodged somewhere between the director's mainstream and more specialized efforts. This time, Soderbergh roots his thriller in a culture that frequently over-uses or abuses prescription drugs. All of us are bombarded with drug advertising, and we've read about doctors who receive consultancy money from pharmaceutical companies looking to steer patients toward one drug or another.

At the outset, Side Effects looks as if it's going to be an expose -- perhaps even a heavy-handed one -- about the social and personal perils of America's drug obsession. But Soderbergh quietly shifts gears on us, moving his movie into more classical thriller terrain.

Early on, the story centers on Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara), a young woman whose husband (Channing Tatum) has just finished a four-year prison sentence for insider trading. Once a Wall Street golden boy, Tatum's Martin Taylor tries to rehabilitate his professional life, but soon realizes that he has other problems.

Emily seems severely depressed. She has trouble relating to others, and at one point, she drives her car into the wall of a parking garage. This apparent suicide attempt brings her into contact with a British psychiatrist (Jude Law), who lives in New York City with his wife (Vinessa Shaw) and young stepson.

Law's Dr. Jonathan Banks eventually puts Emily on a new antidepressant called Ablixa. The drug seems to work -- until it doesn't. The potentially dangerous side effects of Ablixa help put the thriller elements of screenwriter Scott Z. Burns's story into motion. Burns, by the way, wrote the screenplay for Contagion, also directed by Soderbergh.

It's impossible to tell more without tipping the movie's hand, so I'll simply say that Soderbergh increasingly concentrates on Law's character as the psychiatrist finds himself foundering in troubling ethical and legal waters.

It takes time to understand why Mara, last seen in the American version of Girl With a Dragon Tattoo, seems a bit drab. Stick with her. Law excels as an empathic psychiatrist who also needs money. He's taken a $50,000 consulting fee from the company that manufactures Ablixa.

At one point in the story, Dr. Banks meets with the psychiatrist who previously treated Emily, a crisply efficient Catherine Zeta-Jones. Zeta-Jones's character ultimately has more to do with propelling the plot than with creating insight into any of the ethical or psychological issues the movie raises.

If Side Effects really is Soderbergh's swan song, it stops short of qualifying as a totally triumphant conclusion. I don't think I'd rank it as one of the best movies in a career that frequently has balanced entertainment with social significance (Erin Brockovich and The Informant) and that has seen the director employ a dazzling variety of approaches in movies such as Kafka (1991), King of the Hill (1993), Schizopolis (1996) and Bubble (2005).

Obviously, it's not easy to fit Soderbergh into any pigeon hole, which is part the reason I hope he doesn't remain a retired filmmaker.

Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra, the story of Liberace, will play on HBO later this year. But if Side Effects really does turn out to be Soderbergh's final theatrical release, I can understand why.

Directing can become an exhilarating but exhausting exercise in cunning and craft. And every movie presents all sorts of steep challenges -- funding and logistics, to name but two. On top of that, Soderbergh often serves as his own cameraman.

No wonder he's tempted to seek the nourishing solitude of an artist's studio, where he can tend to his creativity in ways that keep it from -- in his words -- "running in place."

'Broken City' touches familiar bases

A thriller that may be OK for January, but isn't as good as its cast..

A justice-seeking cop takes matters into this own hands. A long-time New York City mayor works the system and might on occasion dip into his hand into vats of corruption. An opposition candidate says he wants to bring the fresh air of reform to the city. These are some of the ingredients in Broken City, a thriller steeped in so much urban malfeasance that it feels like the recurrence of a chronic disease. To moviegoers, the symptoms are drearily familiar.

Starring Mark Wahlberg as a former NYPD lieutenant who has taken up work as a private investigator, the movie's strong supporting cast includes Russell Crowe (as the reigning New York City mayor); Catherine Zeta-Jones (as his wife); Jeffrey Wright (as New York's police commissioner) and Barry Pepper (as a reform candidate who's opposing what appears to be the mayor's umpteenth run for office).

In this outing, director Allen Hughes (Menace II Society, Dead Presidents and The Book of Eli) makes his first solo effort, operating without his brother, Albert, with whom he usually collaborates. Like the screenplay by Brian Tucker, Hughes's direction isn't always vice-tight, and although his movie qualifies as decent January fare, its characters and observations seem to have fallen off the library shelf marked "Urban Rot."

Wahlberg is the kind of actor who can occupy the center of a movie with an ordinary-guy vibe, and he does that here. His Billy Taggert is a hot-headed ex-cop and struggling alcoholic who left the police force after being acquitted of murder. A court ruled that Billy acted in self-defense, but an unexpected development threatened to cloud the waters, and Billy was forced to take one for the team.

Seven years after leaving the force, Billy has been reduced to taking surreptitious photos of philandering spouses, and trying to collect back fees from deadbeat clients.

Billy returns to mainstream action when Crowe's Mayor Hostetler hires him for a hush-hush job. Billy's told the city's First Lady is having an affair. The mayor wants to know who's poaching on his territory -- and that's only the beginning of what turns into a festival of back-stabbing.

A plump-looking, pumpkin-faced Crowe doesn't quite conquer a New York accent, but he tries to jam as much color as possible into an off-the-rack urban character. Zeta-Jones brings cool beauty and intelligence to her role; and Wright, always good for an off-balance performance, makes the police commissioner difficult to pin down.

Alona Tal impresses as Billy's sassy secretary, and Natalie Martinez appears as Billy's actress girlfriend. Martinez finds herself at the heart of a mostly unnecessary script detour.

The plot can feel as dense as New York traffic, and at one, point, Hughes even tries his hand at a New York City car chase. Let's just say it doesn't measure up to the standard set by William Friedkin in the French Connection.

If you sit through the end credits, you'll notice that some of the movie was filmed in New Orleans. Whether this had anything to do with a nagging sense that something's missing from this New York City-based drama is anybody's guess. Broken City tries hard to be gritty and savvy, but we've seen enough movies to already know what it spends considerable energy discovering.

More fizzle than sizzle in this romcom

Gerard Butler and Jessica Biel bring little sparkle to Playing for Keeps.

I don't know exactly when Gerard Butler became a mandatory presence in mediocre romantic comedies, but he seems to have been pigeonholed into a career that relies on his rumbled good looks, roguish charm and willingness to adapt to formula.

In Playing for Keeps, a romcom in which Butler portrays a former pro soccer player, the Scottish-born actor, has plenty of genre cliches to kick around, this time in a story that finds his character trying to win back his the former wife (Jessica Biel) he still loves and the young son (Noah Lomax) he barely knows.

Having squandered his fortune in ill-advised business deals, Butler's George Dryer is well on his way to becoming another has-been athlete. Scottish by birth and temperament, Dryer has moved to Virginia in vague hope of landing a sportscasting job and winning back the family he lost as result of irresponsible behavior; i.e., womanizing.

George begins to earn his chance for redemption when he takes on the job of coaching his son's soccer team, a task that also brings him into contact with a variety of sexually deprived soccer moms who are looking for bedmates and solace.

In this category, we find Judy Greer (needy and insecure) and Catherine Zeta-Jones (sexually aggressive and confident). They both play characters who want to sleep with Dryer, who's trying his best to behave himself.

Additional support is provided by Dennis Quaid, who signs on as a wealthy soccer dad who cheats on his wife (Uma Thurman), a woman who also tries to leap into George's bed.

The sexual situations are ripe for farce, but director Gabriele Muccino tempers the movie's PG-13 impulses with a story that's more interested in fuzzy feel-good sentiment than in becoming a playful sex romp. I guess kids' soccer and adult groping don't make for the greatest mix.

The script, credited to Robbie Fox, can seem disorganized and random. At the movie's midpoint, for example, you may find yourself wondering what happened to Quaid's character and why the script even bothered to include him in the first place. By the end, you'll discover that Quaid's Carl is around only to add a list-minute and totally unnecessary bit of plot business.

Because romance -- even at its most predictable -- needs obstacles, Biel's Stacie is engaged to be married when Dreyer arrives in Virginia. James Tupper portrays Stacie's little-seen fiancé, the most underdeveloped of several underdeveloped characters.

Many flaws can be forgiven in this kind of movie, but it's difficult to overlook the lack of chemistry between Butler and Biel, a deficiency that pretty much sabotages any chance that Playing for Keeps will rise above the mediocrity in which its so thoroughly drenched. A bland Biel fails to charm, raising a question that will make sense only to those who've sat through too many of these drippy romcoms: "Was Katherine Heigl otherwise occupied?"

'Lay the Favorite': A break-even bet

Director Stephen Frears offers a light take on the world of gambling.

After watching Lay the Favorite, the latest film from British director Stephen Frears, I turned to the Rotten Tomatoes web site to see how the film -- which debuted at last January's Sundance Film Festival -- had fared with other critics.

I was shocked to see that Lay the Favorite, a gambling comedy based on a true story, had scored a paltry 26 percent on the Tomatometer. In other words, most of the critics that Rotten Tomatoes tracks not only disliked Lay the Favorite, they came close to hating it.

I admit to shock because Lay the Favorite, which could be considered a very distant cousin of such Frears' movies as 1990's The Grifters, hardly qualifies as an object for cinematic scorn. It's not Frears's best work, but it's a colorful and sometimes amusing look at people who make their living betting, and it involves characters who aren't pushed to the tawdry limit.

Casting way against type, Frears puts British actress Rebecca Hall in the role of a private dancer who sets out to break new career ground in Las Vegas. After failing to land a job as a cocktail waitress, Hall's Beth Raymer finds work placing bets for a professional gambler (Bruce Willis) who's attracted to her abilities with math -- as well as to the way she fills out a pair of short shorts.

Problems arise because Willis's character -- one Dink by name -- is married to Tulip (Catherine Zeta-Jones) a woman who doesn't like competition. Tulip takes a strictly business approach to marriage: She insists that Dink vowed to take care of her, and says she'll reciprocate as long as he doesn't stray.

The screenplay, based on a memoir by the real Beth Raymer, also introduces a New York-based bookmaker. An over-zealous Vince Vaughn plays Rosie, a gambler who's as impressed by himself as he is by any of the teams on which he bets. Unlike Dink, Rosie's an illegal bookmaker, and Beth goes to work for him in New York when things turn sour in Las Vegas.

Along the way, Beth becomes involved with a journalist (Joshua Jackson), a mostly normal guy who represents -- at least for a time -- a break with the hustling world.

The major achievement of the screenplay by D.V. DeVincentis, involves the ways in which the characters are forced to behave challenge our initial assumptions about them. And although none of the performances are likely to turn up on Oscar's short list, they're mostly within the range of what Frears is looking for, a slightly cracked comedy lodged in the unpredictable world of gambling.

Lay the Favorite isn't a change-your-life movie. I'm not sure it has a whole lot to say, but it doesn't take itself seriously enough to qualify as a demonstrably bad bet.