Posted: 12/29/2003

Paycheck

(2003)

by Hank Yuloff

Remembering the future with Ben and Uma.

In Paycheck, Ben Affleck plays Michael Jennings, a reverse engineer who takes high tech products, takes them apart, steals their secrets and gives his employer a better product based on the stolen technology. They then wipe his memory of the time he spent doing the job so neither he, nor they can be linked.

As he read the script, I wonder if Mr. Affleck thought that would help in his real life. He could then have avoided Project Greenlight and Gigli. He could (like myself) avoid watching his favorite baseball team (and mine) fold every year. And at some point in the future, could forget and put behind all about the terrible abuse he and J-Lo are taking at the hands of the entertainment media.

Fortunately he won’t have to put Paycheck out of his mind. Directed by John Woo (Broken Arrow, MI2, Windtalkers), this is a fun mystery where Jennings creates a machine that can see the future and does not like what he sees. He sends himself an envelope with 20 items he will need to put the pieces of the puzzle back together after his mind is wiped and booby traps the device. The owners of the company are rather disturbed at this turn of events and decide to take the future into their own hands by killing Jennings.

Director Woo (Woo, by the way, is from the Mandarin phrase for “Explosions on Film”) takes us through 20 clues quickly enough that we never get bored and with a story that has a minimum number of holes in the plot to fall into. If you allow yourself a little bit of buy in, you will enjoy Paycheck a lot.

Affleck (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Chasing Amy, Dogma) is joined in the film by Uma Thurman. Thurman’s previous roles in The Avengers and Kill Bill allow us to believe her as a brilliant biologist who’s soft on the inside while being a kick-ass girlfriend on the outside. Affleck, fresh off Daredevil and last year’s Sum of All Fears is easily believable as being able to handle himself in a fight and with automatic weapons. He also, my wife would insert, looks great in a business suit. Makes you wonder what happened with Gigli?

Will he escape the clutches of the evil Mr. Rethrik (boringly played by Aaron Eckhart from The Core) and his henchman Wolf (equally boringly played by Colm Feore from National Security)? Will the FBI save or try to kill Jennings? Will the equally evil republican Attorney General of the United States (played by the forgettable Peter Friedman from Someone Like You) have his way and make the future be filled with elephant symbolized politicians? From my comments about the bad guys, you can probably figure out what happens in the end. But Paycheck is an enjoyable time at the multiplex and was worth the 110 minutes spent in the dark.

Hank Yuloff loved the symbolism of the Boston Red Sox thrown into the film… He feels it’s too bad they still have a Hall of Famer shortstop. He hopes they, like Jennings, can turn everything around in their favor.

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