Directed by:
Tarsem SinghCinematography:
Brendan GalvinCast:
Ryan Reynolds, Natalie Martinez, Matthew Goode, Ben Kingsley, Victor Garber, Derek Luke, Melora Hardin, Michelle Dockery, Sam Page, Griff Furst, Teri Wyble (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
An extremely wealthy elderly man, dying from cancer, undergoes a radical medical procedure that transfers his consciousness to the body of a healthy young man, but all is not as it seems when he starts to uncover the mystery of the body's origin and the secret organization that will kill to protect its cause. (official distributor synopsis)
Videos (2)
Reviews (7)
Loads of traditional Hollywood clichés starting with plot twists and ending with family values. But Singh's direction is brisk throughout (he's even got a sensible script) and the action is unexpectedly dynamic. Ryan Reynolds in another role where he puts clouds of energy. If Bay hadn't made a visual magnum opus on similar themes a few years ago, this might have been better, as it is, Self/Less looks like the little brother.
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Self/less is a great “small” spring thriller (like Limitless and Source Code) that was unfortunately released in the summer. A great idea, surprising twists, a bearable dose of genre clichés and sentiment. Sometimes the script hastily simplifies the impact of said twists on the characters’ reactions, but it does so in order to maintain a brisk narrative dynamic that is perfect. The action scenes are unexpectedly thrilling and brutal. Tarsem Singh was finally able to make efficient use of his exotic directing technique in the mainstream. One of Ryan Reynolds’ best roles.
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Hollywood's god of composition, Tarsem Singh, after earlier narrow escapes has been given the task of proving that he can make a standard underfunded sci-fi thriller that will show the big studios his subtlety and get him money for a big project, or a script for a comic book or something. You absolutely can't decipher his handwriting in this one, but the direction is the only thing that keeps this joke afloat. In the first half you can see it a lot in the dialogue scenes, which are stagy in a Singh way, cramming as much information as possible into one shot, but later on his eye only slips into a few sequences (btw can someone explain to me why they set the car on fire?). But where the whole film completely runs out of breath is with the script, which after the first reveal tiredly dissolves into a series of terribly boring monothematic dialogues and sad looks that don't manage much closure and are the only thing that moves the story forward. And that's bad.
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So, after Immortals and Mirror Mirror, Tarsem Singh made things right again with me. Self/less is a great film that combined sci-fi, drama and action in the way that Steven Spielberg's Minority Report did. Quite naturally. It looks great, and I (unlike The Fall) almost did not realize that it takes two hours, and the actors and actresses were a joy to watch. The finale similar to The Old Gun made me happy, and I don't consider it as theft, but rather as an accurate and equally impressive quote.
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Well, this was a pretty big disappointment. From Tarsem Singh, I expected at least an intriguing visual spectacle, but I didn't even fully get that. There are scenes here and there that catch your eye visually, but there are too few of them. Unfortunately, this sci-fi is so transparent that essentially after half an hour, you'll already know how it all ends. And the film is two hours long...
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