20 Minutes into the Future, new tech allows for people (usually business execs) to travel by swapping bodies with another person at their destination. The process is called "Xchanging" (after the name of the company) or "floating".
Stuart Toffler is a "corpie", who is sent by his boss to attend the funeral of a murdered business partner via Xchange. When it comes time to return to his own body, he learns that a criminal has absconded with his body. Worse: the body he's currently inhabiting actually belongs to yet another person, who wants it back. Toffler is offered the body of a temporary clone, who only live for a few days and are mostly used for temp menial labor. Unfortunately, the law forbids anyone from Xchanging more than two times per week, which means that Toffler only has a few days to live. In desperation, he flees with his current body, but ends up having to swap for a clone body after all.
Tropes
- Actor Swap: Since the film involves body swapping, it's no wonder the same character can be played by multiple people. Toffler is played by Kim Coates (original body), Kyle Maclachlan (second body), and Stephen Baldwin (clone body). The
same actors also play Fisk, just in a different order. - Attack Drone: Fisk is fond of using drones to perform the hits. They use personal RFID tags to lock on to their targets. Toffler places his tag on Fisk's accomplice, who is killed by the drone's projectile.
- Bad Future: While not much is shown, we do know that Indianapolis is radioactive for some reason (there are no nuclear power plants in Indiana) and that there's a curfew in effect. There's also a law that would prefer that a person die rather than risk psychological trauma from swapping too many times.
- Body Surf: Fisk is a criminal, who habitually steals bodies, so he can commit a crime and then disappear without a trace. We never learn what Fisk originally looked like.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Quayle Scott, who hired Fisk to kill his own father in order to take over the company. Alison De Waay, the CEO of Xchange is also more concerned about the company's public image than with the life of one of her customers. Quayle and Alison also happen to be sleeping together.
- Film of the Book: While this isn't stated anywhere officially, the basic premise is eerily similar to Robert Sheckley's novel Mindswap, although the novel takes place in the far future and involves the protagonist traveling to multiple planets by swapping into alien bodies, while chasing the body thief.
- Fingore: Toffler (in a clone body) accidentally loses a finger when Madeleine tries to use his monomolecular string to cut the ropes holding them together.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: The Xchange Corporation has developed a way to safely transfer minds between two bodies. The technology is mainly employed by "corpies" to travel (in the case of Toffler's boss, to swap with his personal trainer, so the boss can work, while the trainer can exercise the boss's body). A subculture also uses an illegal Xchange device to swap bodies as a sex fetish. Apparently, it's perfectly legal to have sex, drink, and smoke in another person's body, despite the obvious potential consequences of these actions. There's probably a waiver they have to sign or something. All "floaters" are required to wear their personal RFID tags on their necks.
- Gender Bender: The Xchange Corporation generally discourages people from swapping with someone of opposite sex, but a certain fetish subculture uses an illegal swap machine to do it all the time in order to enjoy sex from the other side.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Quayle Scott ends up being killed by the same Attack Drone that Fisk used to kill his father on Quayle's order.
- Love Interest: While at the funeral, Toffler meets his ex-girlfriend Madeleine Renard, who is a reporter and an anti-corporate crusader. He later seeks her out when he's on the run. They end up sleeping together, when he's in the body of a clone.
- Ms. Fanservice: The woman Toffler sleeps with in his second body, who is also "floating". He later meets her in her original (possibly) body and learns she's a "float" fetishist. Also Alison De Waay, the CEO of Xchange. Both women are shown topless during their sex scenes.
- Only One Name: Fisk's first name is never revealed.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: When Toffler keeps evading Xchange's people, the company's CEO Alison De Waay keeps threatening to transfer her assistant Walt Simons to the company's Indianapolis location. Apparently, Indianapolis has somehow become radioactive.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: The mind swap technology is only largely utilized by the rich for travel and working out. Short-term laborers can send their minds to a clone for manual labor anywhere in the country, even though it's not clear who pays for the "floating", which a construction worker isn't likely to make enough money to cover the cost (on the other hand, it does allow the infirm to continue working). An underground fetish club is using an illegal swap device for sex.
- Sharpened to a Single Atom: There's a roll of monomolecular string in the corporate self-defense kit Toffler gets. When he and his Love Interest are tied up, he has her reach into his pocket and use it to free them. She also ends up taking off one of his fingers, but he manages to avoid screaming (the clone body probably has a higher than normal pain tolerance).
- Spotting the Thread: Inverted. Toffler figures out that Quayle is working with Fisk, when he remembers their first meeting, during which Quayle seemed like he recognized him.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: The name of the film and the corporation that performs mind swaps.
