Man With No Past Review: Reincarnation & Chaos

James Bamford’s Man With No Past wastes an intriguing premise in an ambitious yet rather tedious and repetitive story.

After all, it tries to convey themes regarding fate, reincarnation, and the importance of doing the right thing. Clearly, not the sort of thing one would expect from a low-key, direct-to-streaming thriller like this one.

So, points for its ambition and for doing the unexpected. Unfortunately, director James Bamford and screenwriter Steven Paul don’t seem to know what to do with their ideas, which results in a tedious and repetitive movie that goes in circles for what seems to be an eternity. Man With No Past isn’t particularly exciting or clever, which is something I shouldn’t be saying about a film that involves flashbacks to Ancient Rome, fifteenth-century England and World War 2, and that features character actor Marton Csokas as the embodiment of Chaos. But that’s the thing about Man With No Past; it had potential and it has ideas, but they’re all used in the most predictable way possible.

Relative newcomer Adam Woodward plays Ryder, a man who wakes up in a hotel room with amnesia, only having brief flashes to a past he doesn’t know much about. After finding a mysterious gun in his room, he goes outside and into a bar owned by wise Shelly (Charlotte Weston), who offers him a spare room right above her business. Ryder also meets her granddaughter, Morgan (Charlotte Vega), who immediately takes a liking to him. He quickly becomes friends with them and learns that they’re struggling against millionaire Paul Sanborn (Jon Voight), who wants to destroy their neighbourhood and turn it into a bunch of skyscrapers.

Said buildings have been designed by mysterious architect Mr Soach (Csokas), who acts as a sort of advisor for Sanborn. Together, they devise a plan to convince local councilman Roger Hammond (Tim Fellingham) to let them build the district of their dreams: kidnapping his daughter. And to do that, they decide to recruit Ryder, who they assume would be a valuable asset for their team. But as our protagonist keeps daydreaming about different time periods and Sanborn starts to get cold feet regarding the kidnapping, Csokas decides to take matters into his own hands.

What could have been a simple thriller about, well, a Man With No Past, turns out to be something quite more ambitious. Not quite content with crafting a competent actioner, Steven Paul devises a narrative that intertwines the conflict between Ryder and Soach with scenes featuring their ancestors. Thus, we end up seeing Woodward as an ancient Roman saving Charlotte Vega from Jon Voight playing a Senator, or Woodward as an American soldier in World War 2, fighting against Csokas and Voight as Nazi generals.

It’s all rather intriguing and contributes to the film’s themes of time and fate. It turns out, Man With No Past postulates that we all get reincarnated through time and that many of our conflicts get repeated time and time again, making us fight against the same people in different contexts. And all of this is Soach, or rather Chaos’ fault, who seems to be obsessed with influencing powerful people into making terrible decisions. In that sense, it’s interesting to see Csokas playing different kinds of advisors: to a Roman senator, to a rich man in fifteen century England, and even to a Nazi general.

Sounds intriguing, right? Well, the thing about Man With No Past is that, despite having thematically rich flashbacks, most of these don’t affect the plot directly and feel more like filler or inserts from a better movie than something integral to Man With No Past’s identity. And it certainly doesn’t help that the main conflict, the one that takes place in the present, isn’t particularly exciting. In fact, it’s rather predictable, and it turns Ryder into a frustratingly passive protagonist, a man who does very little and, as another character puts it, just “goes with the flow” instead of fighting against it.

Moreover, despite ostensibly being a thriller, Man With No Past isn’t particularly thrilling. Fight scenes –most of them taking place during the flashbacks– are brief and use too many slow-mo shots combined with speed ramping, as if Bamford were trying to imitate Zack Snyder’s 300 nineteen years too late. And although the actors do what they can –both Charlotte Weston and Charlotte Vega are particularly good–, character work isn’t very solid. Like any good B-movie, Man With No Past even includes a gratuitous sex scene, set to a ridiculously melodramatic and intense soundtrack. Sex scenes are fine and even important when a romantic plot is well-constructed and there’s chemistry between the leads, but unfortunately, that’s not the case here.

Which is a pity, because once again, Man With No Past had a lot of potential. Adam Woodward is fine as stoic Ryder, both Charlottes deserve a better movie, and Jon Voight is, indeed, there. And the main premise is intriguing and unexpectedly ambitious, even if the script could have used another draft or two. I will always admire a movie that tries to do more than what was expected, even if the end result isn’t ideal. But despite its interesting characteristics, Man With No Past is too tedious, too repetitive and too haphazardly constructed to be worth a recommendation. It could have been worse, but it could have been better too (and it should’ve had a less generic title).

Man With No Past is now available to buy on digital platforms.

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