Philip K Dick’s stories have joined the ranks of Steven King, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, and Tom Clancy to name but a few. Paycheck is just the recent adaptation of one of Dick’s stories. Minority Report, Total Recall, and Blade Runner are some of his better known.
Paycheck continues his quest to explore such questions as: what happens when the future can be read like a book, what is identity, what is humanity? This time around these same questions are explored within the framework of a well played out mystery punctuated by action.
Ben Affleck plays Micheal Jennings, a reverse engineer hired to steal corporate technology, then his memory is erased so he doesn’t have any direct knowledge of what he did. This time, something goes wrong with his assignment. The only clue to his missing three years and what happened is an envelope he sent himself with seemingly useless items.
The story unfolds in Memento fashion as we watch Jennings work out the problem before him as only a reverse engineer can. It’s enjoyable to watch how each of these innoxious items get him out of one jam after another. The John Woo action sequences work well for once. Expertly he gets the most use out of an atypical action hero who fights as an everyday guy.
Paycheck is good fun. It has a decent story. Moving along with a quick pace and fluid motion. The characters are well developed for an action/mystery movie. It is surprisingly good. Are there questions left unanswered? Sure. Are there things that don’t quite make sense? To the thinking person, yes. However, by my reckoning these are some of the things that when executed well can work for a movie. Just so long as everything isn’t so outlandish or improbable to make the story seem ridiculous, or lest we lose interest in the characters. Here, you’ll find yourself interested in Ben Affleck’s character and in how he overcomes this dilemma in which he’s found himself.
This is by far John Woo’s best all around film for American audiences. Affleck makes a better fit with this character than as Jack Ryan. Watch this one. While it might not be a spectacular movie its better than 80% of what you can find coming out on DVD currently.
