Paycheck Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)December 29th, 2003
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That's it - John Woo is officially off my list. I'm not removing his section from my personal video library or anything...at least not completely. The Hong Kong stuff can stay. So can Face/Off, which I still consider to be one of the best action films of all-time, and Broken Arrow, but that's only because I like looking at Samantha Mathis. Everything else is going in the garbage.
Why? Well, Paycheck is the last straw in a trilogy of really disappointing Woo flicks, starting with the appalling second installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise and continuing with the bafflingly bad Windtalkers. Paycheck makes Woo's Hard Target seem like a genre masterpiece. It's as though it was directed by a Woo copycat to the point that it's impossible not to laugh when the director's trademark dove finally makes its
appearance.
Ben Affleck (Gigli) joins the list of dark-haired, clench-jawed, wrongly accused cinema stars which includes Harrison, Bruce, Tom, Arnold and many other single-monikered action heroes. Here, Affleck is Michael Jennings, a super-intelligent reverse engineer who is hired by tech companies to deconstruct their competition's latest technology in an attempt to make it better and cheaper. The process generally takes two months and is followed by a "memory wipe," which erases Jennings' mind during the project to protect both himself and the company paying him the eight-figure salary.
Jennings' latest venture is ultra-mysterious and it wipes his last three years away. When he comes to, he's being hunted by both the federal government and the evil corporation who hired him. Seems whatever it is Jennings built is monumentally powerful, and it also doesn't work. Jennings is slow to realize it, but he intentionally sabotaged his big project and left himself an envelope full of ordinary, everyday objects to serve as both his clues and an unusual Bat Utility Belt.
What unfolds is akin to Memento and The Bourne Identity, only not nearly as interesting as either. As a premise, the idea is a great one (it's based on a 1953 short story by Philip K. Dick - he was also behind Minority Report, Blade Runner and Total Recall) but it's stretched into one giant mess thanks to Cradle of Life screenwriter Dean Georgaris. All of your old friends are here, from the foot chase through a mass transit hub and a steam-pipe room, to the car chase through congested streets which ultimately culminates at an abandoned industrial site.
Aside from a flash or two of Woo's usual style (hero and villain with guns pointed at each other from point-blank range), Paycheck suffers from its lead performance. Affleck is just fine when he plays a regular guy (Chasing Amy, Good Will Hunting, Bounce), but whenever he tries to, like, act, he ends up looking like a perplexed and mildly retarded simian. It is kind of interesting to see his Jennings have some character traits Affleck already enjoys (Jennings is buff and a Red Sox fan) as well as some things we wish he had (brains and zero short-term memory). I won't get into what the big, scary invention is in Paycheck, but it does involve a future where an American president launches willy-nilly pre-emptive strikes against the countries of his choosing. Which would be unthinkable, right?
1:58 - PG-13 for intense action violence and brief language
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