Xchange (2001)

Director: Allan Moyles

Cast: Stephen Baldwin, Pascale Bussières, Kim Coates

Synopsis: In the future, where it’s faster to travel by exchanging bodies with someone at the destination, a man’s body is hijacked by a ruthless terrorist.

Allan Moyles’ low-budget sf thriller, Xchange, has quite a neat idea – the use of donor bodies for limited periods of time – for its basic premise (particularly appealing is the idea of having your personal trainer inhabit your body in order to give it a workout), and the idea is quite intelligently handled but, unfortunately, the main idea is like one of the movie’s clones – waiting for someone to breathe a little life into it. It’s a shame, because the scene in which Kyle MacLachlan is advised of his predicament by the bitchy female executive of Xchange is faultlessly staged, and leads one to believe we’re in for something special. Sadly, the movie runs out of ideas halfway through, and becomes just another routine man on the run/race against time flick. There are a few neat touches, but some links are extremely tenuous (Quayle Scott knowing Fisk, for example), and the bad guy is obvious from his first scene. Xchange also contains the lamest excuse for a big explosion that you will ever see in a movie.

(Reviewed on 28th July 2002)