Self/less

What Tarsem Singh wanted, in his own words, was “a more commercial Roman Polanski”, so the ornate image making of The Cell and Immortals is held back, though he admits he could not suppress it entirely: “I don’t want to fight my DNA.” The most argued over weakness, that Ryan Reynolds never carries Ben Kingsley’s manner, comes from a calendar rather than a choice. Singh had planned to shoot Kingsley first and show Reynolds the tape; the schedule gave him Reynolds for three months and Kingsley only in the final fortnight, so he told Reynolds to leave it to him, the film not being about that. He tested seven or eight traits to carry across the two bodies; exactly one held, the small sarcastic laugh. His rule for the action was that the weight of the car be felt and the laws of physics respected. The consciousness transfer he calls a McGuffin outright, the engine rather than the subject. The result did not bear that out: 12.3 million dollars in North America against a 26 million dollar budget. A good fit if you are content to see immortality used as the motor of a chase rather than argued over. Not for anyone expecting one consciousness to stay traceable across two actors, since the film reduces that continuity to one laugh.