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A Paramount release. Written by Dean Georgaris; directed by John Woo; starring Ben Affleck, Aaron Eckhart and Uma Thurman. Released to DVD on May 18, 2004.  Paycheck is an unusual film. It’s a Ben Affleck action movie that isn’t a complete waste of time. With previous bombs in the genre like Changing Lanes, Reindeer Games and Gigli, this, in and of itself, is something that should attract cinemaphiles’ attention. Another in the long line of Hollywood films based upon the writing of Phillip K. Dick, Paycheck is the story of Michael Jennings (Affleck). Set in the near future, Jennings is a wildly successful engineer of sorts, who has earned a considerable sum of money supplying short term consulting work for the secretive, billionaire industrialist, James Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart). To keep news of forthcoming projects from leaking out and to also stop other companies from stealing his technology, Rethrick has taken the unusual step of erasing the memories of those persons working for him once their tenure is complete. Whether this is standard operating procedure of the time or merely attributable to that touch of Howard Hughes-like paranoia beset in Rethrick is anybody’s guess. After the completion of Jennings’ latest three-year project and his subsequent memory wipe, he is shocked to learn that he turned down a $92 million payday for his work. The only clues he has to explain his bizarre behavior is an odd assortment of items in an envelope that he mailed to himself some weeks earlier. Far from being a mystery ala Charade though, Paycheck works best as a quasi-dramatic action flick. In many respects, Paycheck is quite similar to Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (another Dick adaptation), with a much heavier emphasis on motorcycle chases and characters pointing large caliber handguns at each other amid a flurry of flying doves. With these facts in mind, it should come as little surprise to learn that renowned action guru John Woo directed Paycheck.  While Woo’s style and presence works well in movies set in the present day and in the action sequences of Paycheck, it does not translate as to the futuristic portions of Paycheck. I’m torn between the feeling that this was Woo’s intention and the feeling that the idea of creating a new and dynamic world for Jennings to live in just wasn’t a big priority for the filmmakers. Strangely, this lack of post-modern exterior set design and artwork has a positive effect on Paycheck. While most movies set in the future feel foreign and cold to audiences (future Earth inevitably gives way to computers and silver colored clothes), Woo did little to convince anyone that Paycheck was taking place in any of other time period but the present. Shot on location in Vancouver, amid the cars and streets of today, Paycheck has a warmth and homeyness that most other futuristic thrillers are missing. Jennings’ world is familiar enough to sink into precisely because it does not look like the alien landscape of a Blade Runner or a Johnny Mnemonic. Paycheck is not a great movie, but it does mark Woo’s return from the critical exile in which he was mired thanks to his previous two projects, Windtalkers and Mission: Impossible 2. The major reason for Woo’s reemergence here is that he finally tackled a project that had a somewhat interesting script, complete with recurring questions about the ethical nature of memory wipes, looking into the future and profiteering. Since the adaptation of Blade Runner in 1982, Dick’s works of fiction have never received the precise treatment and love that they deserve. Paycheck will not fool anyone into believing that it is the ultimate cinematic representation of a Dick story, but was an interesting and reasonably entertaining action flick of its own right. And for Affleck that is an enormous step in the right direction. | |||||
