Self/less (2015)
Certified: 12A
Duration: 117 minutes
Directed by: Tarsem Singh
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Ben Kingsley, Matthew Goode, Michelle Dockery, Natalie Martinez, Victor Garber, Derek Luke
KRS Releasing Ltd

Damian Hill (Ben Kingsley) is a man of considerable wealth and his real estate business has led to him developing large swathes of New York. He is teamed up with Martin O’Neil (Victor Garber). Damian is not living the happy life he should be living as he has issues with his daughter Claire (Michelle Dockery), who is an activist, and he has cancer which is spreading at a fast rate.

After receiving an anonymous business card, which invites him to a process known as ‘shedding’, he ends up meeting Dr Albright (Matthew Goode).

The process presented to him is secret and expensive and only available to the select few who can afford it. The process involves taking Damian’s inner self, his consciousness, and placing him in the body of a young man who, according to Dr Albright, has been grown in the facility. The world must believe that Damian is dead and that in his new form (Ryan Reynolds), a totally new life will commence. After therapy and training in how to control this transfer, Damian becomes Edward Kitner and soon he is in New Orleans with a new friend Anton (Derek Luke) and enjoying life. The only hiccups are the hallucinations of a woman and her child which come to haunt him and for which he is given a pill.

The process presented to him is secret and expensive

The visions persist and become so clear that Edward ends up going to St Louis and there he meets Madeline (Natalie Martinez) and her daughter Anna (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen). When the two see him they are shocked as for them he is Mark, their dead husband and father.

That is when Damian realises that his new body was not grown in a laboratory but rather taken into a lab through unorthodox means. He must figure out what to do, all the while ensuring that Madeline and Anna are not left unprotected, especially as the stakes start to rise.

Ben Kingsley is a man of considerable wealth in Self/less.

Tarsem Singh is an at times divisive director whose extreme stylish approach does not always sit well with his audience. The visual style that he approached such movies as The Cell (2000), The Fall (2006) and Immortals (2011) was impressive. His recent Mirror Mirror (2012), while not perfect was a splendid exercise in showing off the visual strength of the cinema screen can be. With Self/less Singh for the first time has opted not to go to extremes on his visual style keeping this flair under control. The Singh signature look comes into its own in the lush interiors and the way the characters interplay with each other.

The body swap movie has been done many a time before but Singh brings a high science fiction and intelligent approach to the subject. The first half of the movie builds on the concept and in its own way it is sending out strong messages on the healthcare systems on which we depend on, and their ethics. The film finally leads on to a second half that is in the action thriller mode.

The film has interesting turnouts from its cast. Ben Kingsley brings a certain dignity and when inhabiting Ryan Reynolds’s body, a certain welcome levity, especially when he starts to rediscover his connection with the opposite sex.

Reynolds plays himself or at least another version of his easy-going screen character that is caught in situations beyond his comprehension and control. Matthew Goode is sinister, dubious and suitably villainous.

Self/less has a plot and script that owes a thing or two to the classic John Frankenheimer’s Seconds (1966) where John Randolph had been placed into the body of Rock Hudson.

This time around the proceedings have been given a bit less of a surreal edge and more of a high-concept thrill.

The result is an enjoyable experiment that chugs along in both a serious fashion and for once in a Singh movie, also in a fashion that embraces the Hollywood style making this a very unusual addition to the Singh oeuvre.