The Bored Identity
The final cinematic release out this week is that of Self/Less, a science fiction thriller featuring everyone's favourite Ben Affleck doppelganger, Ryan Reynolds, and everyone's favourite Gandhi, Ben Kingsley, whilst being directed by Tarsem Singh, famous for films such as Immortals and Mirror Mirror of which I am afraid to say I haven't exactly attempted to seek out anytime soon. In regards to his latest release, when property and business tycoon Damian Hayes (Kingsley) is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he decides to undergo a medical procedure named "shedding" at the hand of eerie Professor Albright (Matthew Goode Stoker, The Imitation Game) which transfers his life-force into that of a new and healthy human body in order to further live his life and not succumb to that of an early death from cancer. After a successful procedure in which the newly named Edward Hale (Reynolds) takes advantage of his newly found youth and good looks, the echoes of a distant past begin to trouble his mind leading to Edward/Damian attempting to seek out the ambiguous answers behind the secretive organisation of Prof. Albright and co who have become eager to track him down and put an end to his life once and for all.
Although Self/Less does feature an interesting, if rather preposterous, premise, any element of supposed greatness is lost in the films' messy presentation, lack of real suspense or excitement, and a knack to abandon all hope of real intelligence by annoyingly resorting to endless, and exceedingly boring, action sequences in a failed attempt to be this years' Total Recall. Unfortunately for director Singh and the one-two writer partnership of David and Alex Pastor, they are most definitely not in the league of Phillip K. Dick with their screenplay attempting to be something that is both highly engaging and clever at the same time but ultimately results in Self/Less being both highly sleep-inducing and ultimately, incidental. Ben Kingsley's absorbing ten minute stint on-screen aside, Self/Less was hugely uninspiring and rather quite boring on the face of it, with seemingly having a lot to say, but ultimately choking at the chance to say it with any form of gusto or fervour in sight.
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