Self/less

I think at some stage this movie must have had the alternate title of Sense/less because this movie doesn't really make any. I think the process stopped at the stage of finding an interesting premise and just throwing together whatever they could in after to make it a narrative that they think would work.

Damian (Ben Kingsley) is an extremely wealthy real estate who is dying from cancer. He hears about a new technology called shedding, which will put his mind into a healthy, young host body. When he is transferred into his new body, Damian (Ryan Reynolds) begins to relive the memories of his new body and is compelled to find his wife Maddy (Natalie Martinez). On his trail however, is Albright (Matthew Goode), the specialist who conducted the procedure and who doesn't want the secret of how the bodies came to his possession.

The body-switching genre is really nothing new and there's only so many variations that you can try. This one follows the voluntary method of switching, but it seems very anticlimactic. Old cancer patient gets new body: roll credits. It was very predictable in how everything was going to turn out, even the ending wasn't very surprising. I think it had to do with the rather slow pacing of the film. The film devotes a large chunk of time to when Damian first wakes up in his new body, but this is shown in a series of montages one after the other (different montages, not one big one). Even the action sequences seem to take a long time and there is no real feeling of suspense being built up.

Every single actor in this film did it just for the money, I'm sure. Ryan Reynolds is not even trying as hard as he would in his other films, dramatic or comedic. Hell, this isn't even his first body swap movie (see The Change-up). Matthew Goode is a very talented screen actor who can do menacing and scary, but doesn't attempt that here. Natalie Martinez is just trying to get her face on cinema screens after a lengthy television career. That brings us to Ben Kingsley. I kind of expect this kind of thing from him, he needs these smaller little roles to take up his time between the bigger films, although you could almost call his role a cameo.

Another working title for this movie must have been Paycheck but unfortunately that was taken by the Ben Affleck vehicle that is a much better movie worth your time.