It's easy to describe Paycheck, John Woo's new film, as "Minority Report Lite". Like that 2002 masterpiece, the film is based on a story by Phillip K Dick (whose stories were also the inspiration for Blade Runner and Total Recall by the way) and like the previous film; it wraps philosophical questions in a blanket of intense action.
Yet in numerous other ways, Paycheck is a lesser Minority Report. The original film introduced various philosophical questions and then made attempts to answer them. Paycheck introduces those concepts and then basically leaves them hanging, except for one, which we shall get to shortly.
Ben Affleck plays Mike Jennings, a free-lance developer who helps companies become rich by stealing their competitors’ ideas and modifying them just enough to make them more successful. He keeps his conscience clear by having his memory erased upon completion of each job (A metaphor perhaps, for Affleck's desire to erase Pearl Harbor and Gigli from his own mind).
In the early part of the film, we see Mike recruited by a man named Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart, looking uncannily like Mr. Smith from the Matrix movies). Rethrick wants him to spend three years working on a project, for which he will be paid a handsome amount of money. Mike accepts. But after the project is completed he finds that he (for some unexplained reason) forfeited the money and instead instructed himself to leave himself a bunch of household items that will become important later on. And they do become important as Jennings finds himself on the run from both the law, who want him for a crime he didn't commit, and his employers, who want to keep a secret that he discovered secret.
Refer back to what I said earlier about Minority Report. This film is like that one, albeit a step down. Trading Tom Cruise for Ben Affleck and Steven Spielberg for John Woo is not exactly an advance. Woo, despite being a very good action director, is nowhere near Spielberg's level. And Cruise can actually act. Affleck cannot, at least not at this point.
Uma Thurman co-stars as Rachel, Mike's love interest who finds herself in the midst of the action with him. She's tough. But not as tough as you'd expect, you feel like yelling, "Come on Uma. Do some of that Kill Bill, Kung Fu sh**!"
As I pointed out earlier, Paycheck raises quite a few philosophical questions. Unfortunately, it only answers them halfway. The point about whether or not fate is pre-determined is handled decently. But the one on whether or not the ability to see into the future is a good or bad thing is basically left hanging. I guess it had to be done that way to be make room for the action scenes. And those are thrilling. The chase scene is good and the final shootout in a computer facility rivals anything in the Matrix.
Speaking of The Matrix, I noted previously that Eckhart's villain Rethrick looks somewhat like Hugo Weaving's Agent Smith character from that movie. So does his henchman.
So no, Paycheck is not a bad movie. It is, however, not a great one either. The suspense and action are good, but the acting (by all except Thurman) leaves something to be desired and the ending is the definition of tacked on. It is better than most of the other bottom feeders released in the late December to mid February quarter and sometimes that's good enough.
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