Ben Kingsley gets joint top billing but takes an early bath in this tiresome tale of an ageing executive who pays to have his dying soul transplanted into the body of a younger man. Enter Ryan Reynolds as the empty vessel into which Sir Ben’s spirit is magnetically injected – only to discover that this new body has a mind and memory of its own. Or, as Derek Luke puts it: “You thought you were buying a new car, turns out it has a few miles on the clock.” Recycling riffs from John Frankenheimer’s superior 1966 thriller Seconds (which in turn inspired Face/Off), Tarsem Singh’s dopey romp signally fails to mine the identity-swap promise of its premise. David and Alex Pastor’s script may be lumpen, but Reynolds’s failure to display the faintest trace (verbal, physical) of Kingsley’s character negates any potential mind/ body tension. Self/less? Point/less!
