Paycheck Movie Review:


Ben Affleck ends his annus horribilus as it started with another lame dog of a movie.

Based on a Phillip K. Dick story, Ben plays Michael Jennings, a near future technician who signs a deal to have his memories altered after every assignment. The angle is that if the techies can’t remember then there is less chance for corporate espionage or information leaking. Jennings loves his work and his non-committal world. That is until he is presented with a deal he can’t refuse.

Jennings is approached by his friend, Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart) for a job that would set up him financially for many lifetimes and all he would have to risk would be three years. Jennings thinks about the money and the resemblance of a normal life. Without thinking things through to the core, Jennings accepts.

At the beginning of his new assignment Jennings falls for a biologist named Rachel (Uma Thurman) and before we know it we are waking up with Jennings 3 years into the future.

Jennings discovers that his money was signed away for an envelope full of 19 random objects. The objects will hopefully map out a reason behind the mystery of the last 3 years. Or at least he thinks so.

“Paycheck” is utterly baffling. It is brilliantly photographed, we don’t have any moody characters like in previous Dick adaptations, we don’t have any Pre-Cogs or a lot of rain. We have an interesting story that we hope evolves into a thrilling mystery. So what’s wrong?

Well all the basics are there but there seems to be something wrong with the final execution. The film is fascinating and kept me enthused until it flashed forward 3 years.

First there are scenes with men pointing guns at each other’s heads as they ramble off useless dialogue. Then there is the dove flying through the heavily lit door. Sure these are director John Woo staples but for the most part they seem like lame clichés.

Next we have the casting of Uma Thurman as Affleck’s love interest. After seeing Kill Bill’s first volume, I had a real hard time believing Thurman was a damsel in distress. Thurman is a very accomplished actress and it was painful seeing her dumb herself down this low. She should have been kicking butt just like Ben.

Another thing I had problems with was Affeck’s sack of useless goodies. Is this guy trying to be cloned off as the future’s answer to “MacGyver”? Plus even when he’s offered a gun he refuses. He is such a wuss. All the sack using stuff made me giggle because it was just so inane.

Finally there were so many examples of bad dialogue I found myself laughing at the screen. The dialogue referring to time, love and the future was so badly written I felt like I was reading Harlequin Romance. I was hysterical by the time the villains meet their inevitable fates. The film was just so awful in its final conception I could help but howl.

Doctor, quick get Benny a Jack Ryan flick, stat!!

(1.5 out of 5)

So Says the Soothsayer

Dean Kish

Based off of Philip K. Dick’s short story, "Paycheck" is John Woo’s modish homage to the great Alfred Hitchcock. Ben Affleck is in the usual Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart role of the accused man, and Uma Thurman is the Grace Kelly or Kim Novak love interest. Though the devotion is straightforward and pleasant, "Paycheck" is still a lackluster futuristic thriller that is also comprised of the usual choices by director John Woo. The film opens well, but then fails apart; to where by the closure of the film, very lame choices take
control.

In the not too distant future, Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) is a talented computer engineer that makes a living by deconstructing computer programs and
passing the information along to competitors, so that each can make profits from Jenning’s discoveries. After each job, which usually lasts a few months, Jennings has his memories of the job erased by his working partner Shorty (Paul
Giamatti); afterwards he receives his paycheck. A challenging job comes along for Jennings from a man named Jimmy Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart), which will take up not just a few months, but three years of his life that will be erased upon completion. Jennings accepts the job due to the amount of his paycheck, which will be 90 million dollars. However, three years later after completing the job Jennings discovers that he is being tracked, and that he turned in his paycheck for a envelope full of 19 everyday items. The questions being arising
as to what are the items for? What happened in the last three years? What was the job? As well why do people want him dead? The only person that
Michael can turn to is Rachel (Uma Thurman), a woman that he can hardly remember but
is engaged to. Since moving into Hollywood in the early 90s, Hong Kong action director John
Woo has had deliver one very good action film ("Face/Off"), a dreadful war film ("Windtalkers"), and very stylish, yet frail thrillers ("Mission: Impossible
2," "Broken Arrow"). Woo’s work in Hong Kong cinema is by far his best, composed of precisely orchestrated action sequences, which are choreographed as a piece of theatre, rather than a film. "Paycheck" is Woo’s tribute to Hitchcock, and the choices are very clear with continuos point-of-view shots, which Hitchcock made famous, as well as the exposure of many Hitchcockian themes
throughout. However, "Paycheck" is still very much a John Woo film, his fingerprints are all over it. Of course there is a sequence where a car and the hero on a motorcycle square off at full speeds towards one another. Fortunately in this film, the motorcycle veers off, with the two not crashing into one another and the hero still managing to get up for a fist fight. There are also many
point-blank gun "face offs" between the characters, which Woo does in every film. Also, this can not be a John Woo film, without the presence of his
backlit pigeon, which always tells the characters an epiphany. However, the pigeon as most of the time is not need in the film, but "Paycheck" could not be a John Woo film without it. Woo is a very good action director, he likes to blow things up, but this is a futuristic thriller, in a sense. "Paycheck"
supposedly takes place in the future, but there are many inconsistencies. An example is in the first half-hour of the film, Affleck’s character gets out of a futuristic looking taxi, but for the rest of the film the bad guys chase him in everyday cars.

The film runs into most its problems with the writing by Dean Georgaris, who adapted the script from Philip K. Dick’s short story. Other stories by
Dick have been adapted in to solid films, such as "Minority Report," "Total Recall," and "Blade Runner." Georgaris’ only other writing credit thus far is last summer’s terrible "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life." The script really just gets out hand after half way through the film, to where the plot switches gear to a near apocalyptic battle, and the common characters become action heroes. Michael Jennings is a normal man, trying to figure out while people are chasing him, but by the end of the film he is totting machine guns and beating up bad guys. Same goes for the female lead of Rachel. The whole envelope full of common items works to an extent, but the film’s secrets and payoff are pretty stale.

Ben Affleck is so good in some roles ("Changing Lanes"), but is so lost in others ("Daredevil"). As Michael Jennings, Affleck does nothing special
except run a lot and continually overplays that corner smirk of his. Uma Thurman smiles a lot, and does not have much to work with as Rachel, but she is still an actress that you can not take your eyes off of. Aaron Eckhart and Colm Feore play the villains of the film, and do what they are asked to, but are two actors that call for material with more depth. Paul Giamatti serves as comic relief as Jenning’s friend Shorty, and becomes one of the few good things in this film.

"Paycheck" is a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock and his films, but it is more so another John Woo film that is at times overdone and not too intriguing as
a thriller. The secrets of the film come as no surprise for a Philip K. Dick story, which always centers on the future.

Grade: C-

Joseph Tucker

As least the title's appropriate: It's about a guy who will do almost anything as long as there's a big payout at the end. And that seems to be a pretty decent description of the entire cast and crew of this limp thriller, based on a futuristic Philip K Dick story. Although why they've reverted to paper cheques is anyone's guess.

Jennings (Affleck) has built a rather intriguing career stealing technological secrets and then getting his pal (Giamatti) to erase his memory so he has no knowledge of what he's done. This makes his clients very happy, since what he's doing is highly illegal (what the police would say about his crimes is never actually explored). Anyway, another friend (Eckhart) offers him a much bigger job that'll require losing three whole years of his life, but the money is too tempting to turn down. As is the voluptuous scientist (Thurman) working in the lab. Three years later his mind has been blanked, but something's not right. And all he has is an envelope of seemingly random objects to sort out the mess, save the planet, get the girl and so on.

The idea is interesting enough, even if it's plotted far too conveniently to hold water. Affleck is bland but likeable; most of the decent cast merely fill their roles without adding anything to them. Only Thurman injects some feistiness into the film. But the big surprise is Woo, an energetic filmmaker who here seems to have become a rent-a-hack. Besides some nifty shattering glass and the perplexing appearance of one of those slo-mo doves he likes so much, anyone could have directed this. It lacks pace and inventiveness, never drawing anything meaningful or exciting from the premise. It's watchable and smart enough to avoid being dull, but doesn't involve us on any level, and at the end we wish we could delete the previous two hours from our memories. But never fear: You won't remember it five minutes later anyway.

Rich Cline

Michael Jennings (Affleck) is the world’s best reverse engineer. His job is to figure out how competitor’s products work and then improve on them for his client to then dominate the market with a superior version. There is one catch; he has to have his memory of everything he has done wiped to pick up his paycheck. Old friend James Rethrick (Eckhart) offers him a job that will pay enough that he will never have to worry about money again but it will mean losing three years of his life. Jennings decides to take the job but when he has finished he awakes to find he has forfeited his huge paycheck for twenty personal items and he is been pursued by men who want to kill him.

Ben Affleck returns to action to try and re-ignite his once glittering career but Paycheck is not the film to do it.

Based on a short story by science fiction guru Phillip K. Dick and directed by Hong Kong action maestro John Woo, the odds were good but Affleck seams to have caught both of them on a bad day. The once king of the action genre John Woo has switched to autopilot now he has moved to Hollywood. His style is becoming all too predictable and samey, with hardly an original shot or sequence gracing his films since he made the move. Where excitement used to greet a Woo action fest, now he just seems to blend into the crowd. He’ll be working with Steven Seagal and DMX next on one of those Rap-Fu movies, where has your passion gone John?

The story is nothing new either. The future predictions of Minority Report, the technological advances of Bladerunner and the all out action and memory loss of Total Recall combine to give us a story that just about has the ability to entertain.

Affleck’s performance is fine, as we know he can do action but his character isn’t developed to enough to let his acting ability, yes he does have some (watch Chasing Amy), shine through. This is Affleck on autopilot, doing enough to entertain and get the job done, nothing more. You have wonder why Uma Thurman is in the movie however. We all know that she is a great character actress and has just turned her talents to action but here she is just the damsel in distress and the beauty to be dragged along on the adventure. You expect from her talent.

The support is very underdeveloped. Aaron Eckhart’s power hungry technology tycoon nothing new and has far too little screen time for you to start to hate him or discover his true motivations. The always superb Paul Giamatti is criminally underused and the talented Joe Morton and Michael C. Hall are just typical FBI agents.

What Paycheck does have going for it is its action sequences, which bare many Woo trademarks like excessive slow motion and some excellent use of tracking cameras. While they maybe not the most original scenes in John Woo’s repertoire, the bike chase and finale are very exciting and make the film worth watching.

Paycheck is brainless entertainment with a slight hint of plot. It does little to return either John Woo or Ben Affleck to the big league but it is still enjoyable all the same.

Star Rating = * * *

Jamie Kelwick

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