Self/Less

Money doesn’t buy everything and you can’t take it with you -or so the proverbs say. However, the obscenely wealthy Damian (Ben Kingsley) has no time for proverbs. Cancer is coursing through his body and his days are numbered. While his business may still be thriving, his relationship with his daughter, Claire (Michelle Dockery) continues to decay due to years of neglect and a failure to see eye to eye. It seems he will die rich but alone until he’s slipped a card about “shedding”.  

An experimental science with an exorbitant price tag, Shedding offers the rich with one thing they can’t buy; more time. The radical sci-fi procedure promises Damian that everything he is, his brain, personality, etc, will be transferred into a much younger, organic and lab created, fitter self “Edward” (Ryan Reynolds). However, when Edward skips his daily pill he begins to suffer from painful and startlingly vivid hallucinations.

One thing money still can’t guarantee is the truth. When Edward begins to suspect that the visions creeping into his consciousness are more than growing pains, the action begins.The remainder of the film is filled with fight scenes, chase sequences, and deceptions discovered.

The action was thrilling and the big questions reminded me of the slept on 2012 scifi+action flick Looper (turns out they share the same production companies). However, unlike Looper, Self/Less displays less heart and bravery by using its mysterious science strictly as a basis for the action instead of exploring the bigger consequences.

Meditations on capitalism, ethics, death, and immortality are touched on, but quickly fall away to prioritize gunplay. Despite the fact that Ryan Reynolds continues to show excellent chops at being the next big action star, it is disappointing that these big questions; what reeled me in to begin with; are treated more as an excuse instead rather than the thread that the plot is woven around.