SELF/LESS (2015) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

self/less (2015) movie

Genre             |  Action Science Fiction

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   117 minutes

Released         |   30 July 2015

cast

Ryan Reynolds ... Young Damian
Natalie Martinez ... Madeline
Matthew Goode ... Albright
Ben Kingsley ... Damian
Victor Garber ... Martin

director

​Tarsem Singh

writer

​Àlex Pastor ... (written by) &
David Pastor ... (written by)

cinematographer

​Brendan Galvin

music

​Antonio Pinto

film editor

​Robert Duffy

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box office result

Worldwide             $​​​​30,523,226  

Australia                 $​​​​778,961

North America       $​​12,279,691

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the best dialogue

Albright: Death, has some, side effects.

Albright: You've built en empire from the ground up. People will insist that your buildings make you immortal. Now, as you slip away, do you feel immortal? We offer humanity's greatest minds more time to fulfill their potential. Designed to offer you the very best of the human experience.
Damian: It's alive?
Albright: An empty vessel.

Albright: Stop taking the medication, and... Your mind fades into oblivion. Madeline can have her husband back. But... keep going, push on and each dose that you take erases a little more of Mark. His army training, his instincts, after a year or so, they'll be gone forever.

SELF/LESS (2015) MOVIE IMAGES

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SELF/LESS (2015) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Billionaire industrialist Damian Hale (Ben Kingsley) is master of his universe, until he encounters a foe that he can't defeat: cancer. His only hope is a radical medical procedure called "shedding," in which his consciousness is transferred to a healthy body. After the procedure, Damian, now called Edward (Ryan Reynolds), starts a new life in New Orleans, but he's plagued by disturbing images. When he delves into Edward's mysterious origin, he learns that some will kill to keep it secret.

SELF/LESS (2015) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 22 July 2015
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐

Ryan Reynolds’ new film SELF/LESS is an underwhelming affair that looks like it was made cheaply, lacks visual flair and wastes the combined talent of its leading cast members. Director Tarsem Singh fails in several areas to provide the story, by brothers David & Alex Pastor, with excitement or tension, as most of the film’s participants deliver by-the-numbers performances that lack both conviction and subtlety. The failure of SELF/LESS to engage with the viewer marks another failure for Reynolds, whose career as a leading man will take yet another hit and now really needs 2016’s DEADPOOL to reignite his box office fortunes.

The film itself examines the idea of transferring a person’s conscious mind into another body, an idea that has great appeal for dying property tycoon Damian (Ben Kingsley). With only a few months to live, Damian decides to undergo a “shedding” procedure orchestrated by the somewhat shady Albright (Matthew Goode), who operates a clandestine technologically advanced medical facility in New Orleans. To convince the world of his death, Albright stages Damian’s demise very publicly while having lunch with his good friend and colleague Martin (Victor Garber). Soon after, Damian awakens in a new body, with a new face that looks exactly like Ryan Reynolds!

Along with his new skin, Damian also gets a new identity: Edward. Albright arranges for “Edward” to stay in a beautiful New Orleans period home to make sure the procedure takes, providing him with medication to make sure Damian’s consciousness implants itself into the mind of his new, grown-from-scratch “vessel”. Edward/Damian starts to doubt Albright’s claims about his work when he starts to experience memory flashes of a life he never lived. Edward/Damian quickly works out that he’s not the first person to inhabit “his” body and uncovers a clue that leads him to St.Louis. There he finds Madeline (Natalie Martinez) and Anna (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen), a mother & daughter who know him, but of whom he has no memory except for the flashes he has experienced after failing to take Albright’s consciousness-rejection medication. The film turns deadly when a groups of heavily-armed men arrive at Madeline’s home to take Edward/Damian back to New Orleans, by force if necessary.

SELF/LESS shifts from location-to-location, as Edward/Damian, Madeline and Anna are pursued by Albright and his men. The script loses all cohesion at the point where Edward/Damian discovers that his “shedding” procedure was no accident, with the contrivances and the cliches mounting as the film heads toward its denouement. In a rather convenient piece of plotting, it turns out that Edward/Damian’s new body actually belonged to a career Army man by the name of Mark who is highly-skilled in physical combat and weapons training. His background is used to account for the character’s ability to suddenly drive cars at high speed, infiltrate buildings with great stealth and take down numerous henchmen with relative ease. The Pastor’s script make it all just a little too convenient in an attempt to create action sequences that feel awkward and out-of-place in a film is trying to say something important about the human condition.

​One question keeps bouncing around about SELF/LESS that is never satisfactorily answered... Why does Albright need a small army to look after one man? Sure, Damian’s discovery that Albright’s not been on the up-and-up about where he gets his bodies from highlights an ethical dilemma, but the story makes it clear that Mark voluntarily signed a release for his body to be used for “shedding” in order to save his daughter’s life. Damian got what he wanted (a new body), so Albright’s filled his part of the agreement. All Damian has to do is keep taking the pills that Albright gives him and Mark’s memories will cease to exist. It’s made quite clear early in the movie that Damian has been a real prick to a lot of people, so SELF/LESS becomes a story about a unique form of redemption. It’s a story, however, that has an awful lot of coincidences to make the plot work and tie the story up into a closed loop. This, combined with the by-the-numbers filmmaking, makes SELF/LESS one of the most predictable sci-fi thrillers of the last couple of years.

SELF/LESS (2015) USEFUL LINKS

Self/less - Wikipedia
​Self/less (2015) - IMDb
​Self/less (2015) - Rotten Tomatoes​

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