Ultra-slo-mo fight scenes, characters with emotional baggage and standoffs featuring heavy artillery have always been chief among the reasons audiences have gone to see John Woo films. But “Paycheck,” the second offering from Paramount in a month to struggle with themes of time travel, again cleans the studio’s clock. Uninspired star turns from Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman suggest something less than full belief in this quickly forgettable thriller. Even those filmgoers with a constant need for speed aren’t likely to boost pic to more than average B.O.
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Fans of Philip K. Dick also will be disappointed by “Paycheck,” which ranks with “Impostor” as among the least memorable of big-screen adaptations of the late S.F. author’s canon.
It’s the big ideas in Dick’s stories that frequently seduce Hollywood filmmakers, but that can also prove their undoing if those filmmakers aren’t careful. The premise of a specialist hired to tinker with a competitor’s potentially profitable gadgets in order to find out how they work, and who then routinely must have his memory of the job erased, has potential to address themes involving identity and life purpose. But this latest dip into the Dick oeuvre plays more like a TV episode.
Pic hints that its embrace of all things technological has a lighter side, when specialist Jennings (Affleck), after fiddling with a 3-D computer, tells friend and brain specialist Shorty (Paul Giamatti), who supervises the memory erasure procedure, that forgetting his workaday hours allows him to savor the highlights of his life.
Jennings brushes off Shorty’s concerns about a new offer from tech firm Allcom and cocky owner Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart) to work on a super-secret device for three years — Jennings’ stints usually last two months — for an eight-figure paycheck. Cavalier about the deal even when Rethrick’s No. 2 man Wolfe (Colm Feore) plunges a huge needle gun into his arm as part of the memory regimen, Jennings flirts a bit with Allcom’s cute inhouse biologist, Rachel (Thurman), whom he first met at one of Rethrick’s parties.
Moments pass, and it’s three years later, with Jennings’ memory seemingly restored and his services no longer needed. Expecting his bank account to contain his $90 million fee, Jennings is shocked to learn he had signed a paper a month before waiving remuneration. All he has to show for his work is a legal envelope containing 19 items, ranging from a single bullet and a few ball bearings to a transit ticket. The items start coming to good use as he’s captured by, and then flees from, the FBI, which presents him with incriminating evidence.
“Paycheck” grows more preposterous by the reel as it sends Jennings down the rabbit hole, where he must pick up the pieces and put clues together — and team up with Rachel. But it also offers action-meister Woo a chance to juice up the proceedings. Sadly, the chain of chase and shootout sequences here are so familiar that even Woo’s signature style becomes routine.
It doesn’t help that the notion of Jennings being able to follow the breadcrumb trail he’s intentionally laid for himself in case something did go wrong strains credulity. Also jarring is this techie engineer’s surprising ability with guns, chopsocky and motorcycles. Stretching matters even further is the idea that a greedy company would see into a future that points to nuclear war, and then encourages that war to happen — thus nuking itself and its thriving stockholders.
In his second action role of the year (“Daredevil” being the first), Affleck appears distinctly out of sync with this kind of movie role, neither convincing as a techno genius nor as a stud on the run. For her part, Thurman isn’t near matching the ferocity she generated in “Kill Bill,” and even her usual sense of irony is about as erased as Jennings’ memory bank. Eckhart is wasted as a smirking bad guy. Giamatti is the only actor in the cast who seems to be enjoying himself.
An impressively long roster of visual effects firms produce pic’s myriad computer-based and pyrotechnic trickery, and while most of the work displays a high standard, there are no bits of the truly original kind of razzle-dazzle that has graced other major Dick adaptations, from “Blade Runner” and “Total Recall” to “Minority Report.” Woo’s usual production crew gives him that high-budget look, but it’s the old Woo of long-gone, lower-budget H.K. days that is sadly missed.
