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| Paycheck
Classification: Action
Directed:
- John Woo
Actors/Actresses:
- Ben Affleck
- Uma Thurman
- Aaron Eckhart
- Michael C. Hall
- Callum Keith Rennie
CLEVER AND INVOLVING FLICK
Critics panned this movie but I think they missed the point: entertainment. Good guys vs. bad guys; the ability to see into the future; car chases; who's zooming who? Although John Woo is not as frenetically motivated in this one, I found it interesting and involving.BR>Ben Affleck, who will probably never have an Oscar on his mantle, portrays the hero Michael Jennings with a reserved and pensive demeanor. I think he captures the confusion of his situation quite well, and while he may appear "bland," I think Woo wanted Affleck to be more enigmatic than adventurous. Uma Thurman does a nice pre Kill Bill job as Jennings' main squeeze and the delightfully acerbic Aaron Eckhart conveys smooth evil very well. Eckhart is one of those actors whose time will eventually come. Add Paul Giamatti, Joe Morton, Michael C. Hall and Colm Feore, and you have a dandy supporting cast.BR>Fast-paced, at times confusing, PAYCHECK delivers the goods in a stylish and enjoyable manner.
Void of most value.
John Woo's "Paycheck" takes its intriguing "Remember the Future" premise from a Phillip K. Dick story and turns it into a rather humdrum, by-the-books action movie with a terrible, terrible ending that feels like it was tacked on to the final reel.
Trying to echo "Minority Report," "Paycheck," with the exception of one twist, instead echoes every movie with a chase scene about a wrongly-accused guy running from the law. Yeah, it's that boring.
Our generic hero in this one is Ben Affleck, who seems bored and uninspired in his performance as a "reverse engineer" who steals and copies trademark-protected programs. Early in the film, when Affleck creates a program involving a portable porn star, the audience is shown that he has his memory erased after breaking copyright law for companies so, that way, he can't testify against them.
(As a side note, Paul Giamatti, playing Affleck's brain-erasing sidekick, should REALLY stop taking these parts. I mean, after revealing his genius in AMERICAN SPLENDOR, he shouldn't do this wacky sidekick kind of work anymore. His scenes are PAINFUL - only because it feels like he's pandering.)
After that early set of scenes and pointless, chemistry-deficient scenes introducing his character to the capable-of-much-better Uma Thurman's wacky biologist love-interest, Affleck agrees to work with Aaron Eckhart's character, an evil and slimy millionaire.
Once the real plot of the movie kicks in, a memoryless Affleck tries to figure out how trinkets he sent himself in his past will help him survive the future. And he knows the future because the evil millionaire had him build a machine to see it.
If this movie had been at all inspired, it would've cast Eckhart as the guy wrongly accused and Affleck as the smarmy, evil billionaire. The actors would've better fit the roles, and the film would've, frankly, been more interesting.
If this movie actually cared enough about its plot to create an interesting film around it, as "Minority Report" did, then there would be more to say. But there isn't, aside from the usual.
As in every John Woo film, things blow up. There are car chases. People get shot, and white doves show up for no reason whatsoever. (What's with the doves, anyway???)
"Paycheck" is no "Minority Report." It's no "Kill Bill." It has all the resonance of "Daredevil." And you won't need a memory-altering machine to forget it.
this movie is a hundred times better than you got served.
this movie is a hundred times better than you got served.
Buy Paycheck at Amazon.com
Buy posters at Allposters.com
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