SYNOPSICS
Paycheck (2003) is a English movie. John Woo has directed this movie. Ben Affleck,Aaron Eckhart,Uma Thurman,Michael C. Hall are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2003. Paycheck (2003) is considered one of the best Action,Mystery,Sci-Fi,Thriller movie in India and around the world.
Michael Jennings is a reverse engineer and what he does is technical jobs for certain companies and as soon as he is done, his memory of the work he has done is wiped out. Now the longest he has been contracted is 2 months. But now billionaire, James Rethrick offers him a job that would last 2 years, maybe 3, and he promises that he will probably earn 8 figures. Michael agrees. Before beginning he turns in all of his personal effects. And when the job is done, his memory is erased and he learns he made over 90 million dollars over the three years. When he goes to claim it and his personal effects, he discovers that prior to the erasure of his memory he waived his rights to the money he earned and that the items that were given to him were not the ones he gave when he began. Later he is arrested by the FBI who say that he committed some act of treason and murder. It's while he is in custody that he escapes using some the items that he was given. He later meets with a friend who gives ...
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Paycheck (2003) Reviews
An Underrated John Woo's decent Sci-Fi action futuristic favorite flick of mine!
Paycheck (2003) is very underrated John Woo's solid action futuristic thriller, that combines spectacular action sequences with a spellbinding mystery that keeps you guessing from beginning to breathtaking end. It is my John Woo's fourth personal favorite action film of his, that I absolutely love to death. I know a lot of people don't like this movie because it is John Woo's movie and it is rated PG-13, I love it. I love Ben Affleck his made some of his movies that are favorite mine like are: Reindeer Games, The Sum of All Fears, Daredevil and of course this one Paycheck. Watching this movie I must say Ben Affleck can act and he gave one of his convincing acting performances I have seen. I have been from the beginning against his role Bruce Wayne / Batman which I thought they should have left Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy alone, but now after I have seen him in this movie I must say, if you gave Ben Affleck a good script, he will acted terrifically. This flick is outstanding and Ben Affleck's character is well written and decent. Paycheck is a film that I feel is underrated (I enjoyed the story/ideas, the 'writing your own future, and then living the future you wrote after your memory has been wiped' aspect, the cast (I am a fan of Ben Affleck), the 'Sci-Fi' MacGyver aspect, the action bits which were there. I love the story I love Ben Affleck's character that he is a computer engineer who is working for company's and after he is done, they erasing his memories, he later accepts the job by friends company signs a three year contract and starts working on something big. Three years later, he thinks he won $92.000.000, but he is later double-crossed and chased by FBI and ruthless mercenaries. He finds an envelope with 20 subjects who helps him out of the trouble. The film is filled with mystery around, with what is all about. On the end of the film we found out, it is about a time machine, who can write a future and tells what will happened in your own future, which Michael Jennings build. Now Michael has to race against time, to go back where he started working on machine and destroy it, before Jimmy Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart) re writes his future by destroying the world. About the cast a lot of actors in this film practically everyone in the main cast is connected to Batman in some weird way. Ben Affleck is the star of this movie and will be the next actor to portray The Dark Knight himself in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice this month. Aaron Eckhart plays the villainous Rethrick but in The Dark Knight he played Harvey Dent s Two-Face and if I may say he was incredibly underrated. Aaron played outstanding villain in this flick. Uma Thurman plays Rachel in Paycheck but we all of course remember her as Poison Ivy in the 1997 clunker Batman & Robin. Also Batman's love interest in The TDK trilogy is called Rachel. Uma Thurman was very likely in here and I liked her very much. I more remember her as the Bride in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2, Mad Dog and Glory and of course I mentioned a failure Batman & Robin. Colm Feore played my favorite character Henry Taylor in 24 Season 7, he was outstanding as Rethrick's henchman Wolfe. I had no clue Michael C Hall - Dexter Morgan him self was in here as an FBI agent, he was just awesome. The last one is Paul Giamatti who was Jennings friend he wasn't also annoying I love him! He only had three scenes and he acted perfectly. Honestly I dare to say Paul Giamatti is far way better actor than Rob Schneider is. Paycheck is written by short story of the same name by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick., I have enjoyed the action scenes, the acting performances, the chase on motorcycle was my favorite scene in the film. I love this movie and it is John Woo's fifth favorite action film of mine. This movie get's a solid perfect 10 score by me.
Better than expected action / sci fi flick
Philip K Dick wrote many stories which seemed to have great film potential. I never thought of this as one of them. I have seen Ben Affleck in a number of films, and felt that he was good in a few, OK in most, and positively annoying in some. I saw the horrible, misleading trailers. The soundtrack was simply bad. So, needless to say, I went into Paycheck with very low expectations.... and I was pleasantly surprised. Affleck plays a talented reverse-engineer, who sees the possibilities in new technology, and is able to carry it through to fruition. He takes on top-secret jobs and has his memory erased upon the completion of each. He decides to take on a project big and profitable enough to allow him to retire comfortably for the rest of his life. He completes the project, goes through the memory erasure, and then starts to discover what he has done, and, pursued by corporate hit men and the police, tries to recover his memory. Uma Thurmond, a biologist he had fallen in love with, is one of the memories he wants to recover, and also a target. Paycheck is more of an action film than a sci fi flick. The plot serves the action, as do the somewhat one-dimensional characters. And there is so little chemistry between Affleck and Thurmond that the romantic subplot is almost just a distraction. Despite these flaws, I spent an evening being thoroughly entertained by this rehashing of the usual technology-run-amok / knowledge-is-power story. This film is very Hollywood, and uses a lot of slick and clichéd camera-work, but nevertheless tells a good story and does it well enough.
Intriguing premise is made mildly enjoyable, but ultimately unsatisfying.
Rating: ** out of **** I wonder what it says about the state of cinematic science fiction that most of author Philip K. Dick's adaptations generally mix high-octane action with its interesting sci-fi concepts. Paycheck is no exception, hardly a surprise when you note it's from once beloved Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo, who's quickly reaching Michael Bay/Roland Emmerich levels of notoriety in the U.S. with each regressive film. To be fair, Paycheck isn't unenjoyable, and it even gets off to a pretty good start. Set sometime in the near future, there's not much of a noticeable difference with our present time except for a few elaborate-looking gadgets and computers. Ben Affleck stars as Michael Jennings, a reverse engineer who's hired by major corporations to build products superior to all rival companies. Afterwards, his memory is erased by a partner of his (Paul Giamatti) and he's given a large paycheck for his time and troubles (usually the whole process takes about three months). His latest offer comes from an old friend of his (Aaron Eckhart), who promises an eight-figure deal at the end of the transaction. The catch is that the whole procedure will take three years. Despite some reluctance, he agrees to the deal and when the three years pass by, Jennings, thinking he's a rich man, is shocked to discover he gave up over ninety million dollars in favor of an envelope containing twenty everyday household items. Now he finds himself on the run from both the FBI and the company that hired him, and must set out to discover what he built during those three years he's missing. Uma Thurman also stars in the movie as Jennings' girlfriend during that three-year span, but she factors so lazily into the picture, she's obviously only in the film so that a) Jennings can have a love interest and b) he can also have someone to talk to about every little discovery he makes. Then again, function "b" could have worked just as well with Giamatti, but everyone knows a "sexy" chick is a better sell (I have to put quote marks around sexy because Thurman looks positively haggard for almost every minute of screen time she's present; I can't help but feel the much hotter Kathryn Morris would have done better in the role). There are two concepts in this movie that specifically intrigue me (some moderate spoilers here), the first one is choosing deliberately to erase your own memory, but the notion is forgotten after the first half-hour. I was quite curious to know exactly what the process is like to the subject. Take, for instance, the fact that he lost his memory over the three-year span. Does the last thing he remembers feel like a three-year old memory or an event that happened just a second ago? Instead, all we get is a half-hearted (actually, not even that much) attempt at a sorrowful romance because he can't remember his girlfriend and she's not very happy about that. The other major sci-fi concept, the ability to see into the future, isn't explored with much more interest and it leads to a number of baffling questions. You see (quite a few spoilers here), it's revealed Jennings sent himself those twenty items because they can come in handy at a specific moment that'll help him survive or escape from a dangerous situation. But the thing is, Jennings couldn't have known each item would come in handy unless he used the device he built at least twenty times, because there's no way he'd know a motorcycle would come in handy if he never had, say, the bus ticket to escape from the FBI, meaning he used the device to see what he needed to escape the FBI, but still foresaw that he'd be killed in even more future events. That would mean this guy was originally destined to die or get caught in well over ten different scenarios (i.e. he had the bus ticket to escape, but if he didn't have the motorbike keys, he wouldn't have gotten further, and so on and so forth), but this is never really addressed. By John Woo standards, there's surprisingly only a modest amount of action in the film, but at least the material is competently handled, even if it's not entirely believable. What might work in movies that establish their characters as supercops with impeccable aims doesn't come off quite as well in action scenes that feature scientists beating up a large number of armed goons. But if you suspend disbelief, the action scenes are pretty fun (especially the motorcycle chase and the laboratory battle), and coupled with the relatively fast pace, keep the movie perfectly watchable despite the poor script and mediocre acting (I never got into specifics, but this is Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman we're talking about). When all is said and done, Paycheck is a wasted opportunity and is never as memorable a mixture of science fiction, mystery, and action as Minority Report, but it's likely to do the trick for undemanding fans of any of these genres. If you expect more, well, you'd do best to remember this is John Woo we're talking about, not Steven Spielberg.
Better than I thought
I went in to this film with relatively low expectations. Other reviews I had read led me to believe that this was a cookie cutter, run of the mill, made for tv-esque amnesia story. Nothing could be further from the truth. The main plot of most amnesia types is trying to find out who they are and why someone erased their memory. With Paycheck, however, our protagonist already knows why his memory was erased, and since it's only been three years, he of course knows who he is. The plot device is that at the end of this little memory wipe he's supposed to be 92 million dollars plus richer. Imagine his surprise when he finds out he's forfeit the money, and instead mailed himself some apparently worthless junk. Oh, and the company that hired him is trying to kill him. This is what a Sci Fi movie should be, relying on an interesting premise, with future predictions based on current technology. Sci Fi is not space with explosions every five minutes. Although there are a few minor plot holes, I found the movie very engaging, and thought the acting was competent, to say the least. Those who enjoyed Minority Report might also like Paycheck. It's worth a look. bck
some clever plotting done in by man-on-the-run cliches
Though futuristic in look and tone, John Woo's `Paycheck' is really a throwback to that oldie about the man who wakes up one day as an amnesiac only to find himself being pursued by the authorities for a crime he may or may not have committed (just about every other Hitchcock film seemed to be built on this premise to one extent or another). The difference is that Michael Jennings is an amnesiac by choice, a brilliant engineer and scientist whose job it is to develop top-secret inventions for hi tech corporations. Once he's delivered the goods, he allows his memory to be erased thereby rendering him innocuous as a security threat - in exchange for the lucrative paychecks the companies offer him. Yet another of the many recent adaptations of a Phillip Dick story, `Paycheck' begins in the present day, a strange choice on the part of the filmmakers actually, for in this film's view of 2004, the technology for memory erasure seems to be in full swing and widely accepted (perhaps the producers didn't want to have to deal with the expense or bother of creating futuristic designs for their sets and costumes). The majority of the story, however, takes place in 2007, after Jennings `wakes up' from a three-year stint working on a secret project about which he can remember nothing. The trouble is that things haven't quite worked out the way Jennings planned as he finds himself the quarry of both the FBI and the organization for which he was working. Of course, Jennings doesn't know why. As is customary with films of this type, we uncover the clues and piece together the picture right along with the increasingly more enlightened main character. It's that piecing together that is the sole factor of interest in `Paycheck,' for Dick is clearly a writer with a fertile imagination and a gift for mind-bending storytelling. When the film sticks to unraveling its plot complications, it is generally sharp, intriguing and thought-provoking. Too often, though, the film degenerates into a collection of man-on-the-run, action movie clichés. Although the special effects are occasionally impressive, the far-too-frequent chase sequences defy all logic and believability. In fact, a number of scenes actually elicit a few unwanted giggles, so ludicrous and over-the-top are the setup and execution. Director Woo, past master of action spectaculars, is clearly working on autopilot in this film. There isn't much to say about the acting, either. Although Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman - as the woman Jennings fell in love with during the three years, but whom he can no longer remember - do their best with the characters assigned to them, neither is given much chance to expand beyond the stereotypical confines of their respective roles. When it comes to all those involved in this film, I suspect that Jennings isn't the only one here working solely for the paycheck.