Critic Reviews

Don’t Die offers an engrossing window into the mania of a unique individual, one with the outlandish resources to do something that no normal person would even be able to dream about attempting.

We may find ourselves agreeing with the skeptical podcasters and journalists who see Johnson as a kook or a crafty snake oil salesman who persuades gullible people that they have a problem and he has the answer.

Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever goes a long way toward humanizing the Venmo multimillionaire best known for pumping his teenage son’s blood plasma into his own veins.

Includes enough critical voices and material to complicate Johnson’s view about his actions and ethos—in the process undercutting the material’s superficial optimism.

If Don’t Die had a bit more of the discipline its subject imposes on his own days, those feelings might linger longer.

If anything, “Don’t Die” may work better as a cautionary tale of what happens when you give your entire identity, thinking, and online persona to playing an avatar of fitness. It’s a shame that Smith seems to see such radical actions as mostly harmless.

This too-chummy documentary, promoted on Johnson’s website, offers the more familiar reverse sensation of having 90 minutes of your life taken from you. By the time it’s over, you will be older, a progression that if anything the movie feels like it hastens.