Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) is a high priced computer engineer who takes questionable jobs and then has his memory erased. After one such job, with three years of memories gone, he finds that he signed away his paycheck and sent himself nineteen worthless objects. Also, he is wanted by the police. Something went terribly wrong and those objects are his only clue.
This is great Cyberpunk. It’s based on a Philip K. Dick story, has a protagonist who really needs to examine his values, and an obsessed, greedy corporate executive. Top that off with an intriguing, amnesia-fueled mystery, and you’ve got one hell of a film. Then some idiot hired John Woo.
Yes, John Woo, who’s never met a gunfight he didn’t like. Sure the balletic shoot-outs were fun in The Killer, but this is a mystery thriller. Surely, any director with even sub-par talent and a layman’s understanding of film would know to put away those bullets and focus on what’s needed for an intelligent suspense film. Nope. Woo just pastes fight scenes in here and there, with no reason and no thought.
Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman (the requisite love-interest) are both fine, but they are playing a programmer and a scientist. Woo puts them in martial arts duels, gun battles, and motorcycle chases. It’s even pointed out that Jennings is only a mediocre cyclist, but a moment later he’s engaged in trick riding that would have made Evel Knievel shudder. When the Woo-compulsory Mexican standoff appeared, I knew that this was a film run by 5-year olds…and Woo.
Woo has stated he neither understands science fiction nor likes it. That makes me think he shouldn’t direct a science fiction film, but I’m funny that way. Woo, even sets Paycheck in modern times (more or less); I must have missed all those developments in memory alteration.
This is the kind of film that frustrates me. It isn’t like so many that are terrible and were always going to be terrible. Paycheck had a chance to be a significant, clever, philosophical film, but it isn’t. Still, like most of Woo’s work, it’s fun in an “I’m a moron” kind of way. Things blow up. Wow.