Tarsem Singh

Self/Less is about an extremely wealthy man dying from cancer, who undergoes a radical medical procedure that transfers his consciousness to the body of a healthy young man. However, as he starts to uncover the mystery of the body`s origin, he stumbles upon a secret organization that will kill to protect its cause.

A silent film production is interrupted by an accident involving a stunt on a bridge; a dead horse is raised from the water. At a Los Angeles hospital, Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), a cherubic young girl of Romanian descent, wanders the grounds; her arm is suspended in a cast following an accident in the orange grove where she and her family work. Alexandria writes a note for a friendly nun, Nurse Evelyn (Justine Waddell), but the note floats on the wind into a stranger's room. Alexandria chases after the note and meets another patient, Roy (Lee Pace), a Hollywood stunt man paralyzed from the waist down by a botched stunt. Roy is in love with an actress from the film, but the actress is involved with the leading man. Roy's colleague, a fellow actor with a prosthetic leg (Robin Smith), urges Roy to accept a settlement from the studio and scolds Roy for attempting the dangerous stunt to impress the actress. Roy befriends Alexandria, telling her a story to capture her imagination: a tale of her legendary namesake, Alexander the Great, lost in the desert with his men, dying of thirst. A messenger informs the leader all is lost due to his empire's lust for water; the only remaining water barely fills a single helmet. Alexander the Great dumps the water from the helmet into the sand, as Alexandria protests: "Why?" Roy tries to explain it in westernized terms, but it does not make sense to Alexandria. The doctor visits and Roy tells Alexandria to come back the next day, for a new epic story. The next day, Roy and Alexandria begin a quid-pro-quo arrangement: Roy will regale Alexandria with stories, if she steals morphine pills from the hospital infirmary. Alexandria hides from the hospital's scary X-ray technicians, dressed in lead uniforms and iron masks (shielding them from radiation). Alexandria is very close to Nurse Evelyn, who comforts Alexandria when she is scared. Nurse Evelyn is secretly having an affair with the lead doctor in the children's ward. Roy begins his epic story: under a starry sky, an Indian man swims to a tiny sand bar in a calm sea, reporting back to four other men - all of them united by a hatred of Governor Odious (imagined as the silent film's smug leading man), who has marooned them on the island. The first man is an ex-slave, Otta Benga, whom Alexandria imagines as the hospital's friendly ice delivery man. Otta was one of Governor Odious's field workers; when his brother died in the heat, Otta rebelled, led an uprising, and swore revenge against Governor Odious. The second prisoner is an Indian man, whom Alexandria pictures as a friendly worker from her family's orange grove. The Indian was a man of means who married the most beautiful woman in the land; when Governor Odious fell in love with the woman and kidnapped her, leading to her suicide, the Indian, too, swore his revenge. The third man is Luigi, an explosives expert, whom Alexandria envisions as Roy's one-legged actor colleague. Governor Odious feared the strength of Luigi's bombs and had him publicly exiled. Ostracized and alone, Luigi similarly swore revenge against Governor Odious. The fourth man is famed naturalist Charles Darwin, admirer of all living things, who had sought a rare beautiful butterfly species. Governor Odious mocked Darwin by sending him a dead specimen, pinned inside a box; horrified, Darwin swore revenge against Governor Odious. The final man is the Black Bandit, personified in Alexandria's imagination by her father. The Black Bandit's twin brother, the Blue Bandit, has been captured by Odious and set for execution; the Black Bandit is determined to conceive an escape plan and rescue his brother. Darwin confers with his loyal monkey, Wallace, and realizes elephants can swim -- the group follows a lone swimming elephant back to shore. On the mainland, the group encounters the Mystic, a holy man emerging from a charred tree. The Mystic represents indigenous people and seeks revenge against Governor Odious for burning down the lush, forested land. Together, the group storms the castle where the Blue Bandit is held; the Mystic wields otherworldly skills and overpowers many guards. But the group arrives too late: the Blue Bandit and his men have been tortured, murdered, and hung from the ceiling in a gruesome display. Alexandria confesses that her father died in an attack on their home, killed by horse thieves. Sympathetic, Roy alters the story and Alexandria imagines Roy himself in the Black Bandit's role. Alexandria is mesmerized by the tale but Roy interrupts it for a favor, asking Alexandria to touch his toes, to test his paralysis. A fellow patient -- a wealthy, grumpy hypochondriac -- starts an argument with a doctor and disapproves of Roy's wild storytelling. Alexandria meets an affectionate elderly man with dentures, who plays with her and calms her down when Alexandria grows upset. Roy's tale continues - the bandits leave in search of Governor Odious but struggle to find him. The Mystic swallows Darwin's useless bug-eaten map and leads the team deep into a lush garden hidden in the desert hills. Other indigenous people dance over the Mystic's body and a tattooed map appears on his skin; Darwin sketches out the route across multiple continents and landmarks. The group tracks down a caravan flying Odious's flag, pulled by slaves. At Otta's insistence, the group frees the slaves and surrounds the caravan, demanding Odious's surrender. A Princess emerges instead (whom Alexandria imagines as Nurse Evelyn) and the group kidnaps her away. Roy pauses the story and asks Alexandria for help: he needs morphine pills and won't continue the story without them. Roy asks Alexandria to steal medicine from the hypochondriac's locked bedside cabinet and Alexandria does so. Roy continues the story but makes Alexandria promise to leave when he falls asleep, and not come back the next day -- Roy expects to be dead. The Black Bandit falls for the Princess, but before learning the awful truth: she is the fiancée of Governor Odious. The group plans to execute the Princess, but the Black Bandit's bullet is stopped by the locket around the Princess's neck. The locket contains a message from the Princess's father: she must follow her heart and not marry for power or riches. The Princess and the Black Bandit are subsequently married but betrayed by the officiating priest and captured by Odious's men. The heroes are chained in the desert, left to die, but rescued by the Black Bandit's young ally -- Alexandria -- who has been hiding inside their traveling packs all along. Alexandria encourages Roy to continue the tale but Roy passes out and Alexandria leaves him to sleep. The next day, Alexandria returns to find Roy alive; Roy is devastated by his failed suicide attempt (the hypochondriac's pills were placebos) and causes an angry scene, lashing out at the doctors. Upset, Alexandria sneaks into the infirmary to steal more pills for Roy but slips and falls, suffering severe head trauma. Alexandria reels from surreal nightmares involving her father's death, her fears of the hospital, and other childhood fantasies. When Alexandria wakes up, she finds Roy sitting beside her, drunk, scolded for tricking Alexandria into stealing medicine. Roy agrees to finish the story and describes the team's siege on Governor Odious fortress. The team learns the Princess has returned to Odious -- she never loved the Black Bandit -- and infiltrates the fortress, risks be damned. Overpowered and outnumbered, the heroes are killed one-by-one, as Roy ignores Alexandria's protests. The Black Bandit and his young ally finally confront Odious alone, but the Black Bandit can't put up a fight and nearly dies at Odious's hands. Emotional, Alexandria begs Roy to let the Black Bandit live, and Roy agrees to change the story, choosing life over death. The Black Bandit punches Odious and leaves with his ally; Odious falls back on his own sword, skewered. The Princess returns to the Black Bandit, apologetic, but Roy doesn't buy it and sends her off. The hospital's young patients gather to watch a cut of Roy's silent film. When her arm heals, Alexandria returns to the orange groves and misses Roy, but sees him later onscreen: whenever Alexandria watches a silent film with exciting stunts, she will know Roy is there.

Child psychologist Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) is an expert in an experimental treatment for coma patients: a virtual reality device created by Dr. Henry West (Dylan Baker) that allows her to enter the minds of individuals in a vegetative state and attempt to coax them into consciousness. Her current patient, a boy named Edward (Colton James), seems to be making progress during her sessions with him, but there's no outward sign of improvement in his condition and his parents are beginning to wonder whether Catherine's conversations with Edward might simply be drug-fueled delusions. Far from the research facility, in an underground lair, serial killer Carl Rudolph Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) performs the post-mortem ritual on his latest victim. Stargher captures young women, psychologically tortures and drowns them, and then bleaches their corpses completely white. Finally, he clamps a collar around the corpse's neck, making it his possession, a macabre type of doll. Stargher is in the process of stalking and kidnaping his next victim, a woman named Julia Hickson (Tara Subkoff) when the police work of detectives Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn) and Gordon Ramsey (Jake Weber) finally yields a break in the case. The authorities learn the identity of the killer and surround his home. Just before they can finally make the arrest, Stargher suffers a seizure and slips into a coma. Doctors diagnose Stargher with a rare neurological disease that renders his condition irreversible. Meanwhile, Julia wakes up to find herself imprisoned in Stargher's specially designed glass enclosure that is slowly filling with water by means of an automatic timer. It's up to Catherine and Dr. West's team to access the mind of Stargher and persuade him to reveal the location of Julia Hickson in time to save her life. Otherwise, in less than 48 hours, the tank will fill with water and she will drown. Catherine enters Stargher's twisted mind, where she is confronted by the killer's fractured psyche. The boy Carl is too scared to talk, while the adult Stargher rules his inner world like an evil overlord. Another adult version of Carl explains to Catherine that his father abused him and shows her how he began his practice of killing women. Catherine attempts to nurture the innocent side of Stargher's mind, but his murderous half thwarts her at every turn. Eventually the evil Stargher takes control, attacks Catherine and enslaves her mind. Catherine becomes trapped in Stargher's dark dreamscape. Novak volunteers to enter Stargher's mind and attempts to rescue her. He, too is captured by Stargher, but fortunately he manages to remind Catherine that shes dreaming, which breaks her from Stargher's hold. She overpowers Stargher so that they can make an escape. Catherine doesn't manage to get Carl to talk before both she and Peter awaken from the session, but Peter is able to remember a symbol he saw within the dream, a trademark associated with a specialized piece of equipment that leads them to the isolated area where Stargher has built his secret underground room. Novak finds Hickson just in time to save her life. Meanwhile, Catherine decides to reverse the mind link process and pull Stargher's mind into her own to see if she can heal the innocent part of his self. She presents his inner child, Carl, with a paradise, but his murderous side is always present, and manifests as a serpent. This time, however, Catherine has all the power; she attacks the serpent-Stargher, mortally wounding him. Unfortunately, she learns that the two personalities are inextricably linked and the inner child is also dying. Because Stargher's personal mythology equates drowning with being "saved," in the baptismal sense, he dies serenely in the beautiful dream world Catherine created in her mind, his soul finding peace at last as she drowns him in a sparkling pool of water. The use of Dr. West's technology to help the police locate Julia Hickson has given his work new credibility, and Catherine is able to use the reversal technique to bring Edward into her mind, where he will hopefully make new strides with his therapy.