Director: Harley Wallen
Writer: Harley Wallen
Stars: Richard Tyson, Scout Taylor-Compton, Billy Wirth
Run time: 1 Hour, 45 Minutes
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/35HlgR1
Synopsis
A guy sits in the corner with a gun, preparing to shoot himself. He spots a guy getting ready to beat up a girl and goes to her defense, leaving his suicide note behind.
There’s a boardroom argument about weapons control. One guy says if this had been developed a few years ago, that it could have saved his wife. The woman in charge, Bridget Pellegrini, wants to shut the program down, as it’s just too dangerous. If you make a weapon, soon the enemy will have that weapon too, or some kind of logic like that.
Corey, the depressed and homeless guy, is sitting on a park bench and Stefanie, the girl he rescued earlier, sits down and gives him a coffee.
Meanwhile, back at the bioengineering company, Oliver wants to arrange an accident for Bridget. We shift to her in the kitchen talking to her husband Mark, when their daughter comes in. The daughter looks like she wears a wedding dress to school, and there’s classical music playing, not to mention they actually have what looks like a bottle of Grey Poupon sitting on the counter, so you know these are rich people.
We see Stephanie having a conversation with hookers, and they all use words bigger than I’ve ever heard a hooker use.
David, a friend of the family, comes to Bridget, warning her that she’s in danger. She refuses to listen to his warnings. David then goes to Mark and explains it all. Bridget’s daughter has been giving money to Corey, because he’s sad and homeless looking, and he uses the money to buy lunch for all the other poor people which demonstrates to the audience that he’s not an addict.
Oliver tells the scientists to push forward on this project. They can end mortality. They talk about growing new bodies for people in the future. Right now, they’re transplanting dying brains into dead bodies.
Men in masks come in and capture Bridget and Mark, while Miranda the daughter runs back to Corey and cries for help. Corey and Stephanie talk to Miranda, and she explains everything about the company. It is a brain-transplanting project.
David confronts Oliver about what he’s done. Without Bridget, the vote for the merger is expected to go through. There’s a strange scene where Corey goes to the office to get money for wounded warriors, but gets thrown out instead. I’m not clear on why he went there in the first place. The bad guys spend about an hour looking for Miranda while Oliver and a gunman are going around town forcing the vote to go through. Things are really starting to look bleak until Oliver decides he wants to transfer his brain into a new, younger body…
Commentary
It starts out really slow and feels a lot like a soap opera; the cast isn’t going to win any acting awards, at least not in the early part of the film. Still, the further you go into it, the better it gets. Maybe you get invested in the characters, but I think it’s more than once the action picks up the heavy drama subsides a bit.
The sci-fi aspect of the story is pretty much nonexistent except in exposition and the background story. We never really see any brain transplants or mind transfer or whatever the big idea is. At one point Oliver changes actors, and there’s a few scenes with him in the hospital, but it’s never quite clear what is really going on.
It’s basically just a “lone gunman saves the day” kind of story with a business-takeover side plot. It’s a pretty good crime drama, but it’s billed as a sci-fi action film, and it’s really just not.