PAYCHECK Dir: John Woo. Starring: Ben Affleck, John Davis, Aaron Eckhart, Uma Thurman, Paul Giamatti. Let the record reflect, people, I was on to John Woo way before anyone else was. Way back when the Hong Kong action director was churning out ultra-violent flicks for the arthouse section at the video store, I was saying, "what's the fuss?" Ten years later, and I'm still saying it. Woo is an overrated hack with the artistic sensibilities of Joe Esterhasz and the talent of Joel Schumacher. Paycheck, not surprisingly, murders a Philip K. Dick story to provide us with another witless Action movie, shot like a tv special and written by an inbred monkey. I gained a whole new appreciation for Minority Report after watching this film: at least only the last twenty minutes of Minority Report were pure crap. Imagine stretching those out to feature length, but ditching the cinematography. Welcome to the future, baby. Ben Affleck plays Michael, a reverse engineer, hired by firms to rip off other companies' products, and then for some, never really explained reason, have his memory erased. After landing a three year stint on something top secret, Benji wakes up only to find out he's forfeited his hundred million dollar paycheck, and that he's going to killed, and that the feds are after him. Thankfully, he's left himself with an envelope full of stuff that's going to come in handy at the wackiest moments. The premise is that the machine Michael worked on can see the future, and in an anticipatory move that MacGuyver would be jealous of, he's packed an envelope full of paperclips, bubble gum and salad dressing that when combined at the right moments, save his life over, and over and over.
	Mercifully, we live in an age of script doctors, so it's rare for me to say a movie is literally riddled with holes. Nothing in this film makes sense, nothing. There are plot holes you could hide a tank in. Paycheck makes Benny Hill's work look like elegant, uncompromising genius. Why Michael manages to guess so many things correctly, why he doesn't just hide a message somewhere, why people are so incredibly stupid; none of these questions are answered. Woo, with all the imagination of a parsnip, explicates all three emotional states (anger, disbelief, indignation) that the characters go through time and time again. Instead of doing things, the characters have to talk about it, and then we get a flashback of them talking about it, and then it cuts back to the present, where they frown pensively and hear themselves talking about it in their heads. The action scenes are only marginally more interesting, though it is sobering to know that cars in the future will turn into huge fireballs no matter what they crash into, or at what speed. Meanwhile, Ben Affleck makes a believable engineer like I make a believable Holly Valance, and Uma Thurman looks and acts terribly as his love interest. Suspending my disbelief? I couldn't have lifted it with a construction crane. Paycheck was summed up for me at the end of the film, when Ben Affleck says, "I don't want to forget anything, ever again." Unfortunately, I can't say the same. If you want interesting science fiction, get Cypher out on DVD. If you want the stylistic equivalent of wet wholemeal bread, get Paycheck.  D Patrick Garson. Comments?
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