Paycheck (2003)
Directed by John Woo
Michael Jennings is a genius who's hired – and paid handsomely – by high-tech firms to work on highly sensitive projects, after which his short-term memory is erased so he's incapable of breaching security. But at the end of a three-year job, he's told he isn't getting a paycheck and instead receives a mysterious envelope. In it are clues he must piece together to find out why he wasn't paid – and why he's now in hot water.
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4 films that influenced Paycheck
What critics say influenced Paycheck
"Paycheck," like "Minority Report" and "Total Recall," is loosely based on a short story by Philip K. Dick.
"Blade Runner" (1982) was good, "Total Recall" (1990) was mindless, "Impostor" (2002) was stupid, "Minority Report" (2002) was great, and now we have "Paycheck," a fast-paced little potboiler that neither helps nor hurts the Philip K. Dick genre.
Of the futuristic films based on Dick stories, "Paycheck" has more in common with the straight-ahead thriller tone of "Total Recall" than the darker "Minority Report" or the less conventional "Blade Runner."
Dick wrote the short stories and novels that were the inspiration behind some of the better sci-fi action movies to have come out of Hollywood, namely Blade Runner , Minority Report and Total Recall .
Dick's work has inspired brain-teasing films such as "Blade Runner," "Total Recall" and last year's "Minority Report."
With Paycheck, Woo again superficially recalls Hitchcock (by way of split-screen fanatic Brian DePalma, who made Mission: Impossible) and, more substantively, Spielberg; in particular, Woo mirrors the former's North By Northwest and the latter's year-old Minority Report (which, like Paycheck, derives from a Philip K. Dick story).
Woo, who wanted to make a neo-Hitchcock (who doesn't?), here credits Affleck with modelling his character's wardrobe after Cary Grant's in North by Northwest and admits that he's "never had any desire to make a sci-fi movie."
To show that he’s having fun with the genre, Woo dresses Affleck like Cary Grant in North By Northwest and even shoots some scenes with the soft focus of that film.
When he gets the chance to favor style over substance, as in Hard Target and Mission: Impossible II, the films succeed on a purely visceral level.
Woo, of course, needs no introduction: best-known for Hong Kong action movies such as the ultra-violent Hard Boiled, his mega budget Hollywood output has so far been patchy ranging from the likes of Mission Impossible 2 and Face/Off to Broken Arrow and Hard Target.
He came to the States to make his first American film, "Hard Target" with Jean Claude Van Damm, and has had a string of successes since.
Paycheck is Woo ripping off the best of Woo: all his standard signatures (doves, slow-motion, long dissolves, meticulous matching shots, Mexican stand-offs, sliding-while-shooting, starfucking), plus stuff about switching faces (Face/Off), bird cages with hidden compartments (Hard-Boiled), motorcycle chases (Hard Target), and Lazy Susan meet-cutes (A Better Tomorrow II, Mission: Impossible II ).
It's a welcome venture after his failed "Windtalkers," and in addition to being a terrific action thriller all its own, "Paycheck" is perhaps the director's best since "Face/Off."
Working from a a screenplay adaptation by Dean Georgaris (" Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life "), he has turned in a far more satisfying product than his nonsensical "Face/Off."
Paycheck is the latest thriller from Hong Kong action maestro John Woo, the man behind Hong Kong hits Hard Boiled and The Killer, as well as Stateside actioners such as Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Mission Impossible 2 and, most recently, Windtalkers.
Woo, of course, needs no introduction: best-known for Hong Kong action movies such as the ultra-violent Hard Boiled, his mega budget Hollywood output has so far been patchy ranging from the likes of Mission Impossible 2 and Face/Off to Broken Arrow and Hard Target.
But disbelief goes down better with a dose of the hammy humor of Face/Off, and Woo and Georgaris miss the mark, with no help from the wooden Affleck.
It's quite a dramatic and always riling scene used in his other films including "Face/Off".