Paycheck
What I find impressive about John Woo movies are the slow motion sequences that he feeds in the story, especially the action sequences… the doves coming out of the doors … and then the shooting … cant imagine anyone else directing such shots with such élan… when it comes to action in slow motion.. theres none beating woo… sadly in pay check.. the slow motion is missing.. instead he has fed in a lot of technical melodrama… and probably this is the reason.. I could not associate this movie to john woo.. the director who made slick movies like “broken arrow”.. “face off” ….. “MI2” etc…
Micheal Jennings (Ben Affleck) is an extremely intelligent electrical engineer who specializes in “reverse engineering”…. He works on confidential projects involving multimillions.. and gets a hefty “Paycheck” in reward for his ideas.. Besides his technical wizardry he even trades his memory !!!!!… he gets his memory erased on that particular project in order to preserve confidentiality …
Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart) offers him such a project which he is unable to refuse and the reward is huge… $90 Million… the condition – micheal needs to work with rethrick for 3 years, obviously in confidentiality and at the end of 3 years, his memory would be erased as usual and he can return to normal life… Things don’t end well.. at the end of 3 years, his memory is erased (on the project), and he goes ahead to claim his reward… but to his surprise he finds out that he has forfeited his earning on his own will!!!! And has kept to himself an envelope which has a few meaningless objects, which don’t seem to be of any use to Micheal… Y on earth would anybody return 90 million dollars and keep an envelope with a few stationary!!!!!!!
Slowly, he realizes the importance of the envelope and is able to comprehend how each article in the envelope is going to save his life… Rachel (Uma Thurman) is his sweetheart who had worked with him on the project.... she helps him realize the truth and get back at the villains in his life…
More than the action the director relies on the complex script… at times you cant help but compare the scenes with certain Spielberg movies… but the special effects in this movie are certainly not Spielberg class.. The story still is good (boring at times though)… I did get excited when Micheal started realizing that each and every object.. even a little piece of paper in the envelope could save his life… it was like a crossword puzzle… very intelligently put together..
Ben affleck is good.. I don’t really find him as an action star.. at least not for an out and out action.. (not a John Woo action star)… I had read that Matt damon was about to be cast as Micheal.. but as the role was too similar to his earlier film “Bourne identity”.. they decided on his buddy.. Affleck..
Uma Thurman is actually used as a beautiful prop… anybody could have done that role.. - only they wldnt look this pretty :-) … but still I feel she was just wasted.. although she seems to be extremely comfortable with the action scenes that came her way… (probably this mvi helped Tarantino decide his lead cast for “Kill Bill”!!!)
The movie is thematic on… the possibilities of “being able to erase your memories..” “being able to find out about our future”… But there are certainly better movie versions on this particular theme…
Certainly not the best from John Woo.. Infact I would say strictly for Ben Affleck fans…
kunchu