Has Noel Clarke directed this baffling, unconvincing sci-fi just to show the world his chiselled, rock-hard pecs? Looking no further than a mirror to cast his lead, Clarke plays Ryan, an ex-soldier who wakes up in a white van next to a kidnapped boy in London sometime in the near future. Well, who else could Clarke trust to pull off his alpha-to-the-max action-hero, who blends Bond’s swagger with Bourne’s ass-kicking brute force?
Ryan is the victim of a mind-control plot masterminded by a controversial doctor (Brian Cox, barely on screen) who’s treating him for PTSD. But every few days he wakes up for precisely nine minutes and 47 seconds and has a stab at putting things straight. The muddled mess of a plot knocks off chunks of ‘Memento’ and ‘The Matrix’ and throws in Ian Somerhalder (‘The Vampire Diaries’) wearing a silly tweed suit. Clarke (who wrote ‘Kidulthood’ and played Mickey Smith in the Christopher Eccleston-era ‘Dr Who’) directs fights in weird slo-mo and is generous with scenes of himself in his undies.