'Self/less' review, starring Ryan Reynolds, Matthew Goode and Ben Kingsley

Director Tarsem Singh is a distinct visionary lacking a voice. Beyond his moderately moving sophomore effort The Fall, all his features to date — be it The Cell, Immortals or Mirror Mirror — come across as imitations parading near sincerity. His impeccable art direction almost carry them along, particularly his sole enjoyable feature to date, but often his work tediously proves beautiful imagery doesn't necessarily make for necessarily great films. He’s essentially the director people mistake Tim Burton as being.

But for nearly half of his fifth film, Self/less, it looks as though he made a pleasant change of pace. True, its plot is expectedly preposterous. It centers on a cancer-ridden New York billionaire Damian (Ben Kingsley) discovering the company — in more ways than one — of the mysterious scientist Albright (Matthew Goode), who’ll give him the gift of new life in the form of a young, sexy, chemically-compounded body (Ryan Reynolds) before he realizes the operation isn’t necessarily consequence-free once he stops taking his prescribed pills. Even by sci-fi terms, there are some logic jumps needed to overcome here. To the music video director’s credit, little time is spent over-analyzing ridiculous logic within this sci-fi concept — unlike last week’s Terminator Genisys. But as Singh appears less inspired by the movie’s sloppily conceived second half, so too does Self/less drag itself down into silly, disengaging drivel.

What’s most isentropic about the feature is not its boringly handled second-life, though. Rather, it’s that it tries to get contemplative about modern medicine when it clearly has little to say. Self/less also serves as an unintentionally by-the-numbers potboiler action-thriller, muddling the plot further into convolution. In trying to be a few things, it ends up a fairly confused effort. Even worse, it’s forgettable solely because it doesn’t quite stick itself into any firm storytelling territory. It decides to retread multiple different genres at once, making for a disappointingly boring conclusion for what admittedly starts as a refreshingly relished futuristic character study.

It’s not as though Self/less was ever going to be anything more than a fun, goofy piece of popcorn fun, and, at first, the filmmakers do a pleasant job to keep the energy contained and well-regulated. Sure, it comes across as a dis-enthralled mix of Face/Off, Limitless and Side Effects — with the Steve Soderbergh comparisons more apparent through its cool score by Dudu Aram and Antonio Pinto and enjoyably restrained cinematography by Brendan Galvin — but it makes the most of its ridiculous plot by focusing on cool visuals, a good groove and finely motivated pacing.

When the movie decides to not have fun with its concept, however, the smooth vibes disappointingly become jagged. Only rarely does Self/less live up to its full potential. Its admittedly wacky premise does get one beautifully exhilarating montage — combining New Orleans’ local location and musical flairs with Damian’s sex and booze escapades, combined with continuous pill-popping and street performing all contained by mad-cap editing from Singh’s regular editor Robert Duffy — before we’re dragged through a tediously dull shoot-‘em-up action thriller lacking invigorated stakes or believable action.

Once our lead ends up in the company of the entirely underwritten Madeline (Natalie Martinez) and Anna (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen), Singh’s movie essentially throws up its shoulders and decides it did its part, letting the characters clean up the pieces they set up and hoping something fulfilling comes about it. As this happens, the story somehow grows both overcomplicated and half-assed. The mechanics grow more indescribable, but the action-tendencies of the plot stumble any fleeting logic Self/less would even wish to obtain. Essentially, screenwriters David and Alex Pastor came up with half-good, overzealous older male fantasy movie and had no clue where to take it.

As always, poor Reynolds tries carrying Singh’s befuddled movie with his typically assured charisma and natural stamina. He constantly gets lost, however, in trying to honor Kingsley’s portrayal while keeping the disoriented emotional plights in store and also looking good wielding a gun. Kingsley’s performance is fun, but he’s only on screen for less than 20 minutes. Every other actor feels like a tepid character motivator for our main character, unfortunately including talented supporting actors Victor Garber as Damian’s long-time work partner Victor, Michelle Dockery as his activist adult daughter Claire and Derek Luke as his mysterious new friend Anton.

“Death has some side effects,” Albright warns Damian early on in his recovery process. With that in mind, Singh and the Pastor boys also should’ve known original, high concept sci-fi filmmaking don't come without some consequences. It’s not just enough to come up with a cool premise and slide by on unearned integrity, particularly if it doesn’t have much new to offer narratively or stylistically. In short, what begins as a better-than-most copycat of better movies sadly becomes a generic, throwaway action clunker like any you may find on a weeknight at Redbox. It’s a shame, for there’s a better movie here, and good people involved to make it happen. But Singh decides to make yet another wishy-washy movie living up to only some of its self-made potential.