'Self/less' than the sum of its parts.

If you've seen the film 'Seconds' (John Frankenheimer 1966) you won't be surprised by much of anything that happens in 'Self/less'. If you haven't 'Seconds' may I suggest that you spend more time indoors watching old black and white movies rather than socialising and stuff.

'Self/less' is a neat little film, certainly nothing great but quite interesting and entertaining never the less. 

Sir Ben Kingsley plays Damian,  a super nasty, super rich, "one percent" property mogul dying of cancer. He finds out about a shadowy organisation offering elite patrons the chance to transfer their consciousness into a new healthy body. He signs up for the procedure and gets the athletic body of Ryan Reynolds on condition that he sever all ties with his former life. Unfortunately it turns out that this body is not quite the empty shell that it was sold to him as. Hallucinations and paranoia intensify. Is this part of the normal recovery process or is there really a latent consciousness from a former host trying to reconnect with the body? Damian starts digging for answers and doesn't like what he finds.

It's a pretty simple set up and an interesting idea, but one that needs much deeper exploration than this film can give. It it quickly opts to drop the moral dilemmas and instead become a running and jumping and shooting type of film....which it does very well. What I liked most about this film was that it actually took a fresh approach to some of the action genre staples that we've seen played out countless times before. There's a particularly well executed siege in a farmhouse and a car crash that actually seems to have some point to it other than vehicles bumping into each other like dodgems.

It's the sort of movie where you can imagine that if Tom Cruise had been cast it would have worked very well as his obligatory sci-fi/action crossover for the year and would have been well received by audiences. Unfortunately we have Ryan Reynolds in the leading role, who is absolutely fine, but just not very exciting to watch. He does a good job in his early scenes where he apes Ben Kingsley's mannerisms with subtlety but then just becomes vanilla as the film progresses.

It's directed by Tarsem Singh ('The Fall'', 'The Cell') who seems to have been told to tone down the visual excesses of his previous work, which is a mistake, because it actually needs a bit of flair to make it come alive.

On a 'B-movie' level I enjoyed it a lot. It's 'Seconds' grafted into a 'Bourne Identity' body and works just fine. I could have done without the 'Shawshank Redemption' ending and I wish it had a bit more philosophy on its bones but it's more interesting than anything else aimed at adults this week and sometimes that's good enough.