[on screen in print on scene]
THE QUINTESSENTIAL ARTS REPORT
YOUTH NOT WASTED Ben Kingsley Wakes Up As Ryan Reynolds In “Self/less” BY BILL BOWEN hen a dying tycoon can’t resist the secret promise of a new life in a young body, he does what any cancer-stricken billionaire would do – he squirrels away a cache and checks into the secret clinic. But what New York magnate Damian Hale (Ben Kingsley) learns when he wakes up as the virile 30-something Edward (Ryan Reynolds) in Tarsem Singh’s mysteriously titled “Self/less” is that death, too, is complicated. The revolutionary process called “shedding” is accomplished in the script of brothers David and Alex Pastor by placing two bodies side by side on twin CAT scan beds and then sliding them simultaneously into what looks like twin airboat motors spinning behind cheesecloth draperies. It’s all very “Flash Gordon.” When the whirring stops, Hale’s consciousness has been magically transferred into young Edward, a fit-looking guy with a puppy dog smile and a constant one-day shadow of whiskers. But shedding, unsurprisingly, is not without its glitches. It’s the brainchild of the ominous Professor Albright (Matthew Goode), and before it can begin, Hale must fake his death, prompting varying degrees of grief among best friend Martin (Victor Garber) and grown daughter Claire (Michelle Dockery), with whom he has never been close, to his regret. The Barcelona-born Pastor brothers have written and directed “Carriers” (2009) and “The Last Days” (2013), both films about viral epidemics, but their examination of second chances via iden-
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tity transfer has a bit of an identity crisis itself, caught between its science fiction premise and its desire to be a car-chase, shoot-’em-up thriller. Hale initially enjoys the renewal of youth, cavorting with a succession of female partners in nocturnal New Orleans and playing pickup basketball by day, recalling the form he displayed at Princeton half a century earlier. But he begins to experience weird flashbacks that lead him to believe this body had a previous owner. And as he unravels Albright’s lies, like the promise that Hale’s new synthetic body came from a lab, Hale suddenly finds himself being pursued by mysterious thugs with guns. This is when you sense the plot going awry. Hale has had the good fortune to inherit the body of an Army Ranger, with martial arts skills
and instincts intact, and the movie’s identity is suddenly transformed into something à la Jason Bourne, with wild shootouts, narrow escapes, highspeed chases on Missouri back roads and a dozen pursuing bad guys who can’t shoot straight. When Hale somehow ends up with the wife and daughter (Miami native Natalie Martinez and 8-year-old Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen) of his body’s previous owner in tow, things just get dicier. Reynolds has released three films per year since 2013, and he wrapped filming on this one before “Mississippi Grind” and “Woman In Gold.” “Self/ less,” filmed in New York, New Orleans and St. Louis, had its release date changed three times. O TIME: 1 hour, 56 minutes RATED: PG-13 for sequences of violence, some sexuality and language
AUGUST 2015
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