With the critical blast of Gigli Ben Affleck had to make up for himself but with two bombs in a row including Daredevil, this time he has teamed up with the likes of John Woo (director), Uma Thurman, and Aaron Eckhart and it looks like we may have a hit on our hands, and then the movie begins.
Paycheck is filled with too much coincidence, bad lines, and overused stunts that it has nothing to do but fizzle through the use of a horrible script. This movie brings Uma Thurman down to the level of a high school actress whereas Ben Affleck only seems to be a real actor just after he has had his memory wiped and that bewildered look comes across his face. DUH!!
If you don’t know Paycheck is the story about Michael Jennings (Affleck), who does specialized projects for high-tech corporations. Once a job is complete, his memory is wiped so he cannot divulge any company secrets.
Jennings is highly paid for his work and expects an eight-figure paycheck for his upcoming three year job, but once he goes to collect after the three years he finds that instead of the $92 million he expected he forfeit his shares and left himself an envelope of random objects to be used as clues to help him find out what really happened the past three years.
With the help of Rachel (Thurman), the woman he has worked with and loved for the last three years, Jennings is in a race against time to put the pieces of his past together before the people he once worked for have him killed.
Now if it isn’t too unbelievable that Ben Affleck can actually work with and fix high-tech gadgetry this whole plot-line has got to have you finding similarities between last year’s Matt Damon thriller The Bourne Identity. Throughout the flick you will also see that Paycheck is simply a meld of the Bourne Identity plotline and Minority Report and Mission: Impossible II. It wasn’t enough to steal the idea but seeing how the writer of Paycheck was also the writer of Minority Report he just couldn’t leave out the magical board Tom Cruise used to decipher the precog’s message and move it into his latest screenplay, it worked once won’t it work again? Nope is the answer!
If you are a sucker for witless thrill rides where everything seems to work and subways end up stopping inches from the man running down the train tunnel than Paycheck is for you, but if you find those things pointless and rudimentary then I am going to have to suggest you stay home and save your paycheck for another movie, you work hard for that money don’t you? Why waste it?
