John Woo directing a Philip K. Dick adaptation: that certainly sounds like the opposite of coal in the stocking, or as good as a gift certificate from RadioShack. At least it might have sounded that way in 1990. Since then Dick's posthumous legacy has suffered through movies like Impostor, and the Woo-made Windtalkers.
For Woo, whose action-man motifs have been looted so thoroughly by other filmmakers that he could qualify for a creative version of Chapter 11, audience expectations are probably close to flatlining.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF BVI
Yet Paycheck, which open today nationwide, is surprisingly good given that it is basically a dumb movie about smart people. This smooth but bland thriller may be the best we could expect from such a collaboration, especially when Ben Affleck, an actor whose calm exterior reflects an inability to project an inner life, enters the mix.
Affleck is Michael Jennings, a hotshot who has put his electronic genius out for hire to steal the ideas and properties of corporations and then refine them for competitors. It almost sounds like the story of Microsoft Word versus Apple except that for legal reasons Michael gets his mind wiped clean by a dangerous medical process that nearly boils his brain. This procedure also eliminates Michael's memory of the entire period he spent at work, all for a paycheck.
When a new, less dangerous memory-elimination procedure comes along, one that can safely do away with three years instead of a few months, Michael is invited by his old friend Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart) to get involved in a project that could change the world and net Michael an eight-figure income.
Michael will come out three years later with a larger bank balance, but with no idea of his accomplishments; it would be like winning a Golden Globe. The sleek, ascetic paranoia that Dick triggered in his short story Paycheck surfaces; it is the kind of home invasion of the mind and soul that inspired films based on the stories Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Blade Runner) and I Can Dream It for You Wholesale (Total Recall).
For Dick, having one's psyche manhandled was the most staggering crime imaginable; a million dollars was a mad chunk of cheddar in his world, but even today people are subjected to worse manipulation on The Bachelor for considerably less.
Dramatizing the terror that Dick saw in surrendering three years of one's life to someone else has fallen into the hands of a filmmaker whose techniques have been so rigorously studied and overused that Woo's life could be the subject of a Dick short story.
But Paycheck the film is not shocking; it is merely facile and unsettling. Michael's troubled look while wrestling with his decision suggests annoyance, as if he had to walk an extra block to find a Leaf and Bean, rather than any agony over yielding control of his existence.
So Paycheck becomes a glib, scrambling action picture about Michael trying to pick up his life after emerging from his job and finding that everything has gone wrong: he is implicated in murder, and almost everyone on his tail is more interested in shooting first and asking questions later. And he has no memory to use to piece things together, just an envelope of personal possessions that don't match the items he had deposited three years earlier. His use of the stuff in the envelope makes Paycheck feel like a big episode of McGyver, and Affleck's confused sheepishness makes the conceit mildly entertaining.
Paycheck is not much of a movie, though Affleck and Woo have definitely done worse. It could have been directed by anyone; unfortunately, Woo's gift for exploiting tension in closed spaces deserted him so long ago that it could be declared legally dead. (But there is a motorcycle-and-car chase sequence that gets his juices going.)
He works best with actors who understand the physical threat and plunge into the danger anyway. Paul Giamatti, as Michael's scientist pal, gets it. The Six Feet Under star Michael Hall, in his first feature film role as one of the cops prowling the situation room, is relegated to crossing his arms and raising a single eyebrow, a staple of too many recent Woo films.
As for Affleck, he is showing signs of becoming a believable action star; his stick-boxing technique is better here than in Daredevil. He looks good in the man-of-action Oswald Boateng-styled suits, designed to give him a futuristic cross between the man in an Arrow shirt ad and a character in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
Then again, most of the characterization in Paycheck is linked to appearance. For the sinister Rethrick, overzealous use of hair-care products makes the same impression that mustache wax did for silent-film villains.
Only Uma Thurman, as Rachel, a co-worker Michael may have loved in the past, draws on feelings that seem connected to the real world. She is the victim of psychic loss of the kind Dick describes; the collapse of her features when gazing at an unsure Michael provides a fleeting sadness. And she delivers a pretty impressive drop-kick.
Too bad it didn't occur to anyone to make her the lead.
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