Paycheck (DVD)

Time travel, a hero, gadgets and action – from the guy that wrote ‘Total Recall’ - sounds like a whopping film to see, right? I was wrong. Oh, so wrong.

In the rare occurrence of a free evening last night and the intense desire to catch-up on a recent movie that wasn’t tooooo emotional (read ‘taxing’) my brain selected ‘Paycheck’, over ‘Runaway Jury’, mostly because I have read the book for Runaway Jury and know the ending. Buzzer ...
...is based on a short story by Philip K Dick, responsible for ‘Total Recall’, ‘Minority Report’ and ‘Blade Runner’ amongst others. ‘Wahey’ I hear you say – sounds great!…It should have been but wasn’t and as a result I AM going to give away the plot to some degree, so skim at will in the plot section and other obvious areas. (I'll also tell you the bit where you can stop reading if you want to watch this film).

THE PLOT
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Time travel, a hero, gadgets and action – from the guy that wrote ‘Total Recall’ - sounds like a whopping film to see, right? I was wrong. Oh, so wrong.

In the rare occurrence of a free evening last night and the intense desire to catch-up on a recent movie that wasn’t tooooo emotional (read ‘taxing’) my brain selected ‘Paycheck’, over ‘Runaway Jury’, mostly because I have read the book for Runaway Jury and know the ending. Buzzer sounds – EEEEeeeeeeeh. Wrong choice.

This movie is based on a short story by Philip K Dick, responsible for ‘Total Recall’, ‘Minority Report’ and ‘Blade Runner’ amongst others. ‘Wahey’ I hear you say – sounds great!…It should have been but wasn’t and as a result I AM going to give away the plot to some degree, so skim at will in the plot section and other obvious areas. (I'll also tell you the bit where you can stop reading if you want to watch this film).

THE PLOT
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Savvy science/engineer nerd on a mission to save the world and get the girl. Oh, sorry, you wanted something a little more in-depth? A reverse engineer who gets paid to do work then have his mind erased of any knowledge of the work he’s just carried out, works on a very high-profile project and gets paid oodles of money for it being longer than his usual stint (2 weeks) and thus takes onboard a 3 year project.

The project is dangerous, but worth some 92 million Dollars and he takes it on with a lusty desire to never have to work again after this job. The scary, powerful people in charge tug on his cash strings and he agrees to proceed. He hands over the items in his possession which are stored in a brown envelope (important, this bit) for safe keeping and which are to be returned to him when he’s back in 3 years. Stripped of his possessions, he then gets an injection to create a ‘marker’ in his brain, and once the project is over, all information will be erased back to the marker. Once the project has finished and fingers have been snapped, he awakes with a natural desire to kick back in retirement, gets his brain reversed back to the marker with another nasty injection and goes to the bank forthwith.

Here begins the real story, dear reader.

THE CHARACTERS
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>>> MICHAEL JENNINGS (Ben Affleck) is as I mentioned a reverse engineer – he is hired to research the latest high end technology gadget, see how it’s inners work and then come up with a great new toy that’s virtually identical, only better that the original, for a competing company. Once he has accomplished the task, his memory gets wiped so he can’t pass the knowledge on to others. Kind of like a Confidentiality agreement or Non Disclosure agreement in our world, only this is the ‘future’ and we the viewing public would have been far less interested at watching him sign some boring papers. In this way he earns lots of money but has to be subjected to a nasty ‘brain’ machine at the end of each project that removes all said work details and he awakes refreshed and not remembering a thing. He is a money guy, our hero, and claims that he doesn’t miss the time that gets erased anyway. In the course of this you discover that if the temperature of his brain goes above 42°C when being tampered with, the brain zapping machine he could end up being a vegetable (maybe this explains his dialogue throughout the whole film, it’s very likely…)

>>>> RACHEL - we never learn her last name - (Uma Thurman) is the love interest, a brainy and quick-tongued biologist who meets Jennings at a science related party and instantly puts him in his place with some cutting lines. Sadly, he gets a chance to get to know her better and try again once he enters the ‘project’ as she coincidentally works in that building too. As a biologist she spends her time creating lighting, thunder, rain and wind (no, real wind, the gusty weather type) and looking after plants. She’s also a dab hand at electronic robotic mechanic machine handling which comes extremely handy later. She turns out to be very savvy indeed and helps our hero out of the odd spot of trouble, not that he needed it of course.

>>>> SHORTY is Jenning’s trusty brain-zapping-machine-operating friend and general nerdy friend who exists only to make Jennings look good at parties and is generally ignored. Later on in the film he suddenly becomes one of Jennings staple reliable people, which is quite unfair for the little man. Vertically challenged, I should say.

Then we have a selection of ‘baddies’ (Aaron Eckhart being the main one, ‘Rethrick’), the ones responsible for the project, and also FBI agents, who chase Jennings and then the baddies for a while. You will recognise the main FBI character as the scientist from Terminator 2, responsible for creating the all-important chip, but that’s another story.

MORE ABOUT THE PLOT
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OK, so Jennings agreed to do the big 92 million-3-years-out-of-it-project and it involved building a time-machine that can predict the future with a warped lens (uh-oh). He builds said contraption and project over. But alas, on visiting the bank and sitting down in suitable ‘I’m-a-millionaire’ style, we are shocked and stunned to find that disappointment awaits our greedy hero. It appears ‘he’ relinquished the 92 Million worth of shares in the company he worked for and has nothing in his account bar the brown envelope with his possessions. He proceeds to open it only to find that the items aren’t as he left them (he remembers them because he only got the injection after having given in his items, remember). He rants that it’s wrong and there must have been a mistake, as you would, until the lady produces his own signature for a) relinquishing the shares and b) replacing the envelope with a new one, with the different contents. His mission starts here as he needs to find out what the hell has happened to his money and why ‘he’ would have given such insane instructions.

CHECKPOINT
If you don’t want to know more about the plot, do not pass go, do not collect £200. It gets worse from here on as I dissect the story… in summary, don’t expect much from this film if you are now leaving this review! Please rate accordingly what you have read so far and have a good day now, you hear?
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If you are staying on for the rest of my drivel, here begins our heroes’ quest to find out what has happened to him and he realises after a few events that the items in the brown envelope have important meaning and uses. I have to point out what is probably the cheeeeeeesiest moment in the film here, where he is sitting trying to figure out what the items are for, and thus arranges them in an astounding question mark formation on a bed, no doubt helping him no end and gathering a momentous groan from me! Wow, a slap on the back for whoever came up with this momentous idea!

So on hot pursuit of the facts of what has happened and why, Jennings enters a series of deadly confrontations with eventually both the baddies, who want him dead, and the FBI. He initially is caught by the FBI for his involvement in the project but manages to escape (we sigh with relief). He then gets into an even worse predicament as the baddies never thought he’d escape arrest from the FBI and realise they must now finish him off (why, he can’t remember anything). The baddies are also ticked off because Jennings placed a bug in the machine so they can’t see the future until they’ve fixed it.

Each item from the brown envelope has a use and he begins to use them with astounding timing and instant knowledge of what they’re for as he battles baddies and makes some great escapes. In the end, the secret message he has sent himself via the envelope is that he must destroy the time machine he helped build in order to SAVE THE WORLD no less. Ah, nice to see a different storyline. This machine, if built, will eventually cause nations to fight over it and blow eachother to smithereens. Our hero and the girl battle and fight to win the day.

FAULTS
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Of course, I am going to have to mention the following things I found annoying or fairly unbelievable:

- The Brown envelope. Well, never have I seen such a well preserved and unruffled envelope be put through so many action sequences and shootings, come out pretty much unscathed. Who makes these, I want some!

- What’s In the Envelope? The goodies he’s given himself to solve the mystery are not that exciting or riveting (hairspray?), and you wonder how exactly it was he could have selected these and known they would work, the time continuum confuses me but I’m suuuure there’s something mightily wrong here.

- The Time machine. I’m blonde, and even I do not believe a machine can predict the future because it has a warped lens. Not only this dear reader, but the film seems to indicate that who ever stands on the machine and presses buttons/does a hand-scan can see their own future, it does NOT see the WHOLE world’s future, major plot issue here as Jennings shows newspaper reports from the world's overall future.

- The Bug In The Time Machine. SURELY on completing the project, tests would have been done on the machine in front of all sorts of people and the fact that Jennings put a bug in it would have been noticed, because it won’t work point blank.

- The Bug In The Machine 2 – If he knew the machine was going to cause the destruction of the planet, why just put a bug in it? He’d get in hot water for this so may as well destroy it completely.

- The Dialogue. Short, not very believable – generally as a result of Ben Affleck point blank. Nuff said.

- The Brain Zapping Machine – Like I said, I’m no scientist, but erasing a ‘blob’ from your brain can’t mean you’re erasing a memory, all the blobs are interlinked and you’d become a vegetable (forgive the non-science talk).

- The Baddies. If they wanted Ben Affleck dead, why not do it when he woke up and had finished the project, before releasing him?

- The Baddies, point 2 – If Ben Affleck’s memory is wiped anyway after finishing the project, why would they want to kill our hard-working hero anyway?

- The Rachel Double – Come on, the double looks nothing like Rachel and her eye colour is much darker.

- General cheesiness of ‘saving the world’ comments from our hero.

- The bullet we see aiming it’s way to Jennings chest still has casing on it, which would be impossible once the gun had been fired, so a nice little ‘blooper’ type thing there for you.

JOHN WOO
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This film was directed by John Woo, and I have to say I did enjoy ‘Face/Off’ when it came out. It was all-new and action packed, very watchable and different. Having seen slow-motion doves flutter around the screen in practically every film of his since then, I groaned on seeing that yet again a white dove was used in this one. Come on, it may be a signature mark but move along Mr Woo, something different please. In this comment I also include unrealistic motorbike chases, as seen in Mission Impossible 2 (look, I’m riding with no hands!) and Paycheck, as well as the ‘two-men-threaten-to- shoot-eachother-face-to-face-but-don’t’ usual, tired scene.

SOUNDTRACK
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Not pacticularly memorable but nothing too bad or too great, a bit out of character in some scenes where the type of music didn't seem appropriate for what was happening.

SUMMARY
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I’d watch this again with a group of friends so we could all have a laugh and just pick holes.

NEGATIVE POINTS > The wooden acting from Ben Affleck and the cheesy Woo moments will get overall laughs and snickers, whilst the all-important question-mark formation gets the ‘worst moment of the film’ prize for me, followed closely by Uma Thurman’s ‘machine gun grab with a machine’ sequence. Highly unrealistic it’d go off without a hitch in a tenth of a second (I’m cruel and a non-believer, I know)

Uma Thurman was watchable but not given wonderful lines, and not really believable as a biologist with green fingers - plus if you had to act with Ben Affleck you can only do so much I guess.

Ben Affleck – Wooden, somewhat dim, cocky – and the character was too. Overall, the characters did not seem to bounce off eachother much anyway in my opinion.

The fact that they have to break through a motorbike dealer window with the newly acquired bike he’d pre-ordered is a bit OTT, but I guess wouldn’t have been an action movie if he’d quietly wheeled it out. The motorbike chase is pure John Woo and unnecessary anyway, as are most motorbike chase scenes I guess.

POSITIVE POINTS> An OK story that could have been a reasonable film. Some good action scenes. The two budgies were very charismatic and had great screen presence, I’ll keep an eye out for their next appearance.

Hope you enjoyed my rant… save yourself the money and rent something else! 

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