" — Fuck you! — You've already for the sixth time refused to get up. — Fuck off! — Your limit is ten times. Dialog Toffler and his gadget assistant Canadian director Allan Moyle gained his first popularity after the youth musical drama Turn the Volume in 1990 with Christian Slater in the title role, then a promising star. But the further career of Allan Moyle went with varying success: the detective comedy of 1992 “Pistol in Betty Lou’s purse” with Penelope Ann Miller, Elfrey Woodard and Julianne Moore failed both at the box office and according to critical estimates; in 1995 Moyle returned to music cinema and “Empire Store”" with Renee Zellweger and Liv Tyler still found his supportive and satisfied viewer. And in 2000, Moyle again decided on an experiment in the genre and shot a fantastic thriller “Body Exchange” scripted by Leopold St. Pierre and Christopher Pelama. The main roles in the film were played by Stephen Baldwin, Pascal Bussier, and as a guest will be Kyle McLacklan, the famous FBI agent Dale Cooper from the significant and epochal series “Twin Peaks”.
According to the writers, the action of the film “Body Sharing” develops in the near future, when a powerful corporation has found a way to move as many people as possible into the body of another. This is very convenient if you do not want to be recognized, to participate in some orgy or if you do not have time to get from one end of the country to the other in the right time. A high-ranking employee of the firm associated with the above corporation, by the name of Toffler, has never used the services of “relocation”, but after another terrorist action directed against the most important members of the board of the corporation, he is forced to quickly “relocate”. And it seems that everything is good at first, but then he learns that his body was “stolen” and did it, most likely a suspected terrorist. Toffler has little time, can die in someone else’s body and does not trust the representative of the corporation and goes on the run to find his body. But it won't be that easy: Toffler will have to compete not only with a terrorist, but also with a huge conspiracy.
In general, the plot of the film is well twisted and the action goes on continuously, that is, Bodies Exchange can be called a dynamic film. But let’s not forget that he is also a representative of the genre of fiction, and with such a plot, the viewer should be given visual pleasure from the spectacle. Unfortunately, special visual special effects should not be expected. Apparently, the budget of the picture was not designed for scale and thus a special bias was made towards the detective storyline, which is well embedded in the plot and is of interest throughout the picture. We can also say that Moyle attracted the audience with the help of naked women. No, there are not a huge number of them, but almost every woman who gets into the frame and has lines, sooner or later will be without underwear. Now this is no surprise, of course, but by the year 2000, this clever move is noticeable. For example, our domestic viewer would be surprised and curious to watch the “nude”, yet not everyone had videotapes with German films of a known quality.
So, if there are no special claims to the director and the script, then what happened that the film did not become popular? Most likely, there are no noticeable stars of the first echelon in it. Yes, Stephen Baldwin, Kyle McLacklan and Kim Coates are recognizable personalities, but still they should be attributed to the second tier. And their performance in Body Exchange eloquently confirms their status. Baldwin plays an android that Toffler had to “possess.” He’s a good guy, and so desperate, smart and brave, but still Stephen Baldwin, with all my respect for him, is not a hero of blockbusters, so Body Sharing was not. McLucklan will only play his first third in the film, after which you quickly forget about him. Well, the actor visited the set, pleased fans of “Twin Peaks”, well, this is enough. Kim Coats only by his appearance says that he plays only criminals, although in Bodies Exchange he still has a more versatile role and Coates, by the way, is not bad, but still he is in the background. Well, female actresses Pascal Bussier and Janet Kidder fit well into the tape, but they are unlikely to conquer with a strong acting game, although the genre of the film itself did not require this.
From what I liked while watching Bodies Sharing, it was, first of all, a well-written detective storyline, which can really be considered interesting. It is now a lot of viewers are sophisticated in matters of conspiracies of powerful corporations, when they are put into the context of the plot, but if you try to abstract from those memories, then, again, the detective here is interesting. The actors of the film demonstrate a good game, although no one is particularly distinguished. But it’s a pity that Bodies Exchange was almost devoid of visual spectacle. But the detective is still interesting and dynamic, so:
7 out of 10