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Jan 09, 2018richmole rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly good; even with Ben Kingsley is no guarantee of a good product (see the awful TV mini series Tut--or, rather, please ignore it.), and Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds isn't quite Ryan Gosling. The theme here (extended life and the price paid to achieve it) isn't new, either. However... What IS new iare two twists on the ol' "deal with the devil" theme--what if the extended lifetime process takes longer than expected to actually work? Another twist: what if the "devil" (In this case, a shyster doctor and his thuggish hitmen) take new-body short-cuts? Yikes! So, those two twists, some decent performances--and a good one by Natalie Martinez--and mostly-convincing action sequences make for a three-star thriller. Reynolds is pretty good here--(2015 was a great year for him, see him in the excellent Woman in Gold with Helen Mirren), Ben Kingsley does as much as he can during his brief screen time, and there's Matthew Goode (who? Oh, right: the race-car driver who marries Mary in the last episode of Downton Abbey.) as the shyster doctor who, along with his just desserts, gets a little short-changed here by script-writer and director. What could have been... Satisfying bit at the end, too.