Paycheck

Paramount pictures and Dreamworks pictures present a Davis Entertainment company/Lion rock production

Starring: Ben Affleck, Uma Thurman, Aaron Eckart

Directed by: John Woo

Rating:***1/2

Plot: Michael Jennings(Affleck) is a man who is really good at stealing technology and making it a little bit better. The deal is that the company he works for erases his memory after he does the job. Michael gets asked by his friend and boss played by Eckart to do a long mission but he will get an uber paycheck for it. Michael goes for it even though he has met the woman of his dreams. Before he knows he doesn't remember what has happened over the last three years and is being hunted. All he has are 19 clues in which he sent himself to stop a horrible act to occur. A great motorcycle chase and not enough Woo, ensue.

Acting: Personally I think Ben Affleck has been getting a bad rap in Hollywood and general society attitude towards him. Okay Gigli that was his mistake and yes he should have felt the pain from it. He also made Daredevil though which I really enjoyed and Affleck himself has done great work in the past and over all seems like a good guys. Project Greenlight I think is brilliant and very hopefully to outsiders of the buiz. But whatever, Ben does what he has to in this film which is really just look confused through out a movie. I mean this is an action thriller you don't need Sean Penn like acting performances to make the movie roll. So I have nothing to really praise about his performance, but he also doesn't really do anything wrong so its all good in my books. Uma Thurman is in this just coming off of doing the brilliant Kill Bill film. She is mainly wasted through this movie. She isn't really in the movie all that much and the chemistry between Uma and Affleck is basically vacant thanks to that. All her lines in the movie are plain and have no value. She keeps repeating "Don't you believe in second chances?". She says at least three times and it got on my nerves. Whatever she got her paycheck to do Paycheck. Now Aaron Eckart plays the bad guy in the film and does a pretty good job at it. He's one of those up tight and sarcastic bad guys which is cool. Eckart I think is another under rated actor in Hollywood. I think he is great he just has a way of picking bad movies to be in The Core is a good example of this. He has a couple scenes in The Missing but a couple of scenes in which he doesn't say much so it does not matter. So its a great cast that really doesn't do much acting wise because this is an action movie now, come on.

Directing/Writing: When I first heard John Woo was directing a movie based off of a short story by Phillip K. Dick the man who wrote the short stories for Minority Report and Imposter I was confused. I know that Dick does not have a lot of gun action in his stories so this bothered me. All my worries, well they came true. If you don't know who John Woo is you really should punch yourself in the face. He is the master of action. His films like The Killer and Hard Boiled are so good no action movie can make it to the standards those films made. Since Woo has come to America the violence in his films had to be toned down thanks to the American policy of pussyfying everything. So we got Hard Target, Broken Arrow and Face/Off. I think all three are classics and then he made MI:2 which I thought was a fine movie but it was not the Woo I remember. Then Windtalkers came out, now that movie had its moments but Woo making war films just doesn't work. This film being rated pg-13 lacks anything Woo fans want. Ben Affleck tries to not shot anyone so he uses sticks and hand to hand fighting. Which bothered me after I saw the film, how does a computer engineer know how to fight that well? Whatever. The only really great action moment is where Affleck and Uma are being chased by several cars while on a motor cycle. Good stuff. Now I know it seems like I have just been pointing out the movies flaws, which I have been. The thing is this movie is a good ride, its fun it really never has a let down moment. It's just for me as a big John Woo fan this was kind of a let down.

Overall: It's good fun and has some thrill moments. This movie has a smart and sensational when its doing its stuff well, its just the romantic general crap falls flat and leaves you with a nasty after taste. Also look for John Woo trade marks all over the film like the dove and duals with pistols. Oh man I want Woo to make R movies again just so I can see some good dual pistol action, you know what I mean?