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Self/Less(2015)
Focus Features Jul 10, 2015 | Wide
A dying real estate mogul transfers his consciousness into a healthy young body, but soon finds that neither the procedure nor the company that performed it are quite what they seem.
Releases
Original Release | Jul 10, 2015
Box Office
Results
$5,403,460
$12,279,691
$19,527,465
$31,807,156
Director & Top Cast
Technical Specifications
Sound Mix: Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English
Showtimes
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(U.S. Only)
Summaries
Plot Summary
- Billionaire New Yorker & property magnate Damian Hale (Ben Kingsley) is diagnosed with terminal cancer in his lungs and liver. Martin works for Damian in his office. Damian is a ruthless businessman, and has built a vast empire, but he knows that all that would be for nothing as he would be dead in less than a year. Martin also lost his child to cancer a few years earlier. Damian asks Martin if he had heard about "Shedding", but Martin denies any knowledge of it. Claire (Michelle Dockery) is Damian's estranged daughter. Damian makes an effort to meet her at her makeshift office where she works with her colleagues to do some social work. Damian says that he wants to bury the past and offers her funds, but Claire is insulted that Damian would try to solve everything with his checkbook. Damian walks away.Damian finds a business card directing him to Professor Albright (Matthew Goode), who informs him about a medical procedure called "shedding", in which one's consciousness is transferred into a new body. Albright says that less than a dozen people have undergone this procedure as it is exclusive. He claims to offer humanities greatest minds more time to fulfill their potential. The procedure itself costs $250 million.They claim to "harvest" the new bodies, which are genetically engineered for perfection. Damian agrees to the procedure and follows Albright's instructions to stage his own public death. While having lunch with Martin, Damian drinks a coffee at a cafe instructed by Albright and goes into shock. Instead of emergency services, Damian's body is picked up by Albright's men who bring Damian to their facility. Albright then transfers him into a new, younger body, and prescribes medication to alleviate the vivid hallucinations which he claims are side effects of the procedure. Damian's dead body is delivered to the morgue to close the loop on his death.Damian then goes intense physiotherapy to learn to use his new body. Damian starts a new life in New Orleans under the incognito name of Edward Kidner and is quickly befriended by his neighbor Anton (Derek Luke). He later forgets to take his medicine and has hallucinations of a woman and child. Damian (as Edward) questions Albright, who dismisses it, but accidentally mentions details of the hallucinations that Damian had not discussed.Albright then arranges for Damian to take a vacation in Hawaii, but Damian, convinced the hallucinations are a real memory, identifies a landmark he saw in his vision and heads to a farmhouse outside of St. Louis. There, he finds the woman, Madeline (Natalie Martinez), who reacts to him as her apparently deceased husband Mark Bitwell (Ryan Reynolds).Damian plays along as Mark, though he is shocked to learn that Mark may have sold himself to Albright, in order to pay for their daughter Anna's (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen) life-saving treatment. Damian and Madeline are suddenly attacked by Albright's men, including Anton. It is revealed that Anton was working for Albright, and Anton announced his intention of killing Madeline and Anna. Damian fatally wounds Anton and kills his accomplices, then flees with Madeline to collect Anna from school.At a nearby motel, Damian then uses a laptop to research additional details regarding "shedding", and discovers that a man named Dr. Francis Jensen, now deceased, was the pioneer researcher in the field of trans-humanism. In a video, Damian notices a tic Jensen shares with Albright, then sees Albright sitting next to Jensen, deducing that Jensen may have shed his consciousness into Albright's body.Damian then finds Jensen's wife, Phyllis (Sandra Ellis Lafferty), in a nursing home, but she is living with Alzheimer's and remembers nothing. Damian lures Jensen (Albright) to the facility, where he reveals that the pills are meant to fully eliminate the original personalities of the bodies used in the shedding procedure. Damian then deduces that without the pills, Damian's consciousness will die, and Mark's will re-emerge. Jensen later escapes when more killers arrive. Damian is almost overpowered, but Madeline wounds the attacker, who proves to be Anton in a new body. Anton reveals that he has shed multiple times. While Damian confiscates Anton's pills, Anton taunts Madeline to ask her "husband" why he cannot answer personal questions about their life.Madeline then confronts "Mark" over his lack of knowledge of their personal details, causing Damian to reveal the entire story. He takes her and Anna to his old friend Martin O'Neill (Victor Garber) and convinces Martin to arrange for Madeline and Anna to flee to the Caribbean. When he and Madeline discover Anna playing with Martin's previously deceased child Tony, Martin admits that he allowed Tony to also use shedding, and that Jensen's men are coming. Damian then reveals shedding's secret to Martin, who reacts in shock and disgust. Damian distracts Jensen's men while Martin flees with the others. Damian again fatally injures Anton, but the other thugs realize that Damian is alone and turn to recapture Madeline and Anna.Damian then purposely stops taking his medicine to experience more of Mark's memories, which reveal that Jensen has a lab in an abandoned warehouse. Jensen captures him and starts to shed Anton into Mark's body. Damian, remembering that metal interferes with the process, hides a bullet casing in his mouth, causing the Shedding Machine to malfunction and destroy Anton's consciousness. Masquerading as Anton, Damian then rescues the others. Although Jensen tries to claim that Damian needs him to survive, Martin was able to reverse-engineer the pills and give Damian the formula, allowing Damian to safely torch Jensen to death with a flamethrower. After killing Jensen, he has Martin complete Madeline and Anna's escape to the Caribbean.Damian later visits his estranged daughter Claire (Michelle Dockery) but does not reveal his presence inside Mark, simply giving her a letter that reconciles Claire with her father. Damian then travels to the Caribbean and fully stops taking his medicine. The real Mark then slowly re-emerges and finds a video message from Damian thanking him for the time that he gave to him. The story concludes with Mark finally reuniting with his family.
Storyline
- An extremely wealthy man, dying from cancer, undergoes a radical medical procedure that transfers his consciousness into the body of a healthy young man. But all is not as it seems when he starts to uncover the mystery of the body's origin and the organization that will kill to protect its cause. — Anonymous Without a single doubt, time is running out for New York's powerful and successful real-estate magnate, Damian Hale. Battling terminal cancer, the dying billionaire will get a new lease on life, when the shady Phoenix BioGenetic organisation's cutting-edge "Shedding" procedure offers the choice to start afresh, in a vigorous young body. However, as Damian's consciousness settles in a pristine new host, strange hallucinations of a borrowed life will be the first set of unforeseen drawbacks. Is this the institute's take on immortality? — Nick Riganas A dying New York real-estate tycoon undergoes a top-secret procedure to transfer his consciousness into the body of a healthy young man, but he discovers that his new life isn't what he expected after learning about the mysterious origins of his new body and an organization that is prepared to kill for its cause.. The body of sixty-eight year old New York City based cutthroat real estate development mogul Damian Hale is being ravaged by cancer, he not having much longer to live. The one person he wants to reconnect with before he dies is his estranged daughter, Claire Hale, who refuses to speak to him. Through anonymous means, Damian learns of the secret Phoenix Corporation based in New Orleans and run by Dr. Albright, who, for a $250 million fee, performs a revolutionary procedure called shedding: Damian's still functioning brain with all its knowledge and memories will be transferred into a laboratory created healthy body. The procedure would entail that Damian give up his life as he knows it, but with what money he is able to stash away, to start life anew in a newly created identity, in his case thirty-five year old Phoenix born Edward Kidner. Part of the recovery is to take medication contained in a red capsule on a daily basis. In missing one dose, "Edward", during his recovery away from the secret and hidden facility, begins to see visions of people and places he doesn't know, but knows something about, and inherently knows exist in real life. In tracking down the people and places in his vision hopefully without Albright or his subordinates knowing, Edward begins to believe that his life under Albright's world will never be his own. In the process, he has to figure out exactly what those red capsules he takes every day actually do, which again he surmises is not exactly what Albright tells him, and how to regain a life he can call his own while also protecting/saving those Albright sees as acceptable collateral damage in unknowingly getting Damian to this point as Edward. — Huggo