There’s a Twilight Zone premise – though sadly no Twilight Zone brevity or script discipline – to this sci-fi thriller. Ben Kingsley is Damian, an ageing billionaire property magnate with a continuing hunger for deals, but also a dire cancer prognosis: he’s raging against cruel mortality. Then he discovers a creepy corporation run by a bespectacled technocrat called Albright (Matthew Goode) specialising in “shedding” for the super-rich: moving your mind and consciousness into a new twentysomething body: and Damian’s self is duly transplanted into a young hunk, played by Ryan Reynolds. Then he finds out this body was not, as promised, grown in a lab but belonged to someone else – a young soldier who sold it, sacrificing his life to pay for his sick kid’s desperately needed operation – and now this guy’s memories are starting to flash back into Damian’s head. It’s a nice idea, and the opening act is fun as the newly young hero exults in his unaccustomed health, strength and sexual attractiveness. But sadly Reynolds at no time attempts a Vice-Versa-type Ben Kingsley impression and the movie loses its focus as it degenerates into a preposterous and dull chase thriller. Shame.
