PAYCHECK

Rating: 3

Click here to listen to the interview with John Woo.
After a brief excursion into the uncertain waters of reel history with WINDTALKERS, John Woo has returned to the action/martial arts genre he does so well with PAYCHECK. Based on the short story by Philip K. Dick, it starts with the classic Hitchcock formula of a guy being chased by a slew of people with murderous intentions. Usually, the guy in the cross hairs doesn’t have a clue about what his potential assassins are so ticked off about. In a neat variation, our guy Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) has 20 clues, and in an even neater variation, he mailed them to himself before having his memory of the past three years wiped clean by the hi-tech conglomerate, the ironically named ALLCOM, for which he had toiled diligently during that time.

It’s a standard clause in Michael’s contract when he works for ALLCOM, the reason being that what he’s doing is back engineering other people’s hard- and software in exchange for a memory wipe, a large paycheck, and little chance of prosecution for patent infringement. His luck’s run out this time, though, because the project he was working on, optics, has attracted the government’s attention and, for some reason, the ill will of ALLCOM’s all-powerful founder, Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart). The reason, and I’m not giving anything away here, is that the optics involved were for a super-powerful lens that can see such great distances that, in compliance with Einstein’s view of a curved universe where time flows like a lazy river, it can bring the future into view.

The clues turn out to be guides to help Michael negotiate the future he saw for himself and they kick in when needed in ways that are, well, nifty. As Michael evades both the Feds and Rethrick’s evil henchman (Colm Feore), the envelope becomes like McGyver’s emergency kit, saving Michael in all sorts of inventive ways that we can’t see coming, but that make perfect sense when the time comes. And that’s the important thing here. What we have in PAYCHECK is a big, well-paced thriller that’s scads of fun as it races along to a suitably Woo-esque climax of gunshots, acrobatics, and way cool slow motion effects done with a wind machine making hair, clothing, and carnage whip around in evocative ways.

Not that there aren’t foreshocks of the final battle between the good guys, the bad guys, and those Feds who mostly get in the way. There’s the motorcycle chase, the subway near miss, and shoot-outs with sprightly sprays of glinting glass. Add an angular art design that looks like the way the future was imagined way back in the 1950s, a dangerous machine that has the requisite, room-sized flashing blue-white arcs of light, and an odd love story between Michael and Rachel (Uma Thurman), the toothsome biologist he doesn’t remember, but to whom he has entrusted his life and the whole thing falls together to deliver on its promise to entertain. There’s even a dash of philosophy about fate, this is Philip K. Dick, after all, that is intriguing without taxing the grey cells too much.

The thing about films like this is that it’s arguably a waste to cast a real actor in the lead part. Hence Ben Affleck is the intuitive choice because his character spends virtually the entire film waiting for the light bulb of understanding to go off over his head. Say what you will about Ben’s abilities, he’s got that particular look down cold, making this type casting at its very best. As his nemesis, Eckhart oozes a well-groomed ruthlessness played neither too broadly nor too subtly, a quality echoed by Feore who brings an edge of cool sadism to the part. Thurman is leggy, sincere, and swings a mean pipe-wrench when called for, which is pretty much all her part does call for.

PAYCHECK does what a good popcorn flick should do. It takes us to another place, gives us a fun plot and wows us with its visuals. It even gives us something to ponder on the way home about fate, luck, and John Woo’s preternatural sense of designing a free-for-all that makes poetry of chaos.