Body swap flick ignores big questions
“self/less,” if you couldn’t tell from the preposterous title, is a deeply silly movie that takes itself very seriously.
The premise is interesting enough: A dying man (Ben Kingsley) undergoes a procedure to save his mind by ditching his failing body for a shiny new model (Ryan Reynolds). But, the lofty ambitions, trite messages, half-hearted allegories and over-the-top caricatures make director Tarsem Singh’s latest a misguidedly campy experience.
Damian is extremely wealthy and powerful. He’s “the man who built New York from the ground up.” He can ruin another’s life before lunch, just for sport.
He’s also only got six months to live. His cancer has metastasized and he has yet to come to terms with it. He hasn’t even told his daughter, although we’ll soon find out that they’re estranged.
Craving immortality
This is a selfish, egotistical man. The type who walks all the way over to the driver’s side of his town car to knock on the window so the driver will get out and open the passenger seat door for him. The type who is so consumed with his own specialness that he will pay US$250 million for a new “vessel” for his brilliant mind. The type who also craves immortality so wholly that he doesn’t ask too many questions about the origins of the new body.
Albright, the doctor behind the controversial “shedding” procedure, snivels that the bodies are grown in labs.
Anyway, in his new, youthful body Damian goes off to live in New Orleans to play pickup basketball, party and get girls — a lot of them. Because even with 86 years of wisdom, when you’re suddenly given the body of Ryan Reynolds, priorities shift. So much for using that great mind.
And this is the main problem. Kingsley’s Damian was a sour, ruthless, brilliant man who’d constructed his own empire. Reynolds’ Damian is a little dopey, deeply curious and empathetic from the start, lacking even an ounce of Kingsley’s bitterness and intensity.
It’s as though they’re two completely different men, which makes for a far less interesting film, especially when Damian begins to suspect his new body didn’t come out of a lab.
Damian starts having visions of a farm with a woman and child. Albright swears they’re hallucinations, but Damian is compelled to investigate‚ perhaps his most out of character move. Why would he start caring about others now?
“Self/less” imagines itself as a high-concept redemption tale. But it’s more concerned with the action than the big questions or dark implications.
Damian makes a few sacrifices along the way and finds a certain peace amid the chaos, but we never cared. The movie just assumes the audience will develop empathy for him, never wondering why we’d ever root for this awful billionaire‚ even in Ryan Reynolds’ body.
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