What a waste of my time!!!

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Awful. Especially given the cast. The writing was almost incomprehensible and the acting equally bad. This could have been a Leslie Nielsen or Mike Myers parody, it is so improbable.

Ben Affleck and John Woo basically do a sci-fi version of The Bourne Identify. Loosely based on a Phillip K. Dick story, Affleck plays a computer engineer who willingly has his memory erased to prevent him from sharing trade secrets, but after he's done working on the secret project he finds that he left himself a mysterious envelope with 20 seemingly random objects that are actually clues about his memory-wiped past. It's a decent set-up worthy of a Phillip K. Dick story, but the film quickly devolves into a series of entertaining if forgettable gunfights and chase sequences. Affleck makes a subpar action hero and his attempts at martial arts pale when compared to his buddy Matt Damon's work as Jason Bourne. Woo provides plenty of his usual slow motion gunfights, dramatic zooms, doves, and Mexican standoffs, although he also still has his penchant for overly dramatic of performances, which seem out of place in English language films. Production values and special effects are solid and outside of the wooden Affleck, the film boasts a strong cast the includes Aaron Eckhart, Uma Thurman, Paul Giamatti, and Joe Morton. Overall, "Paycheck" is never boring and had a story with real potential ("Memento" meets "Total Recall"), but is squandered by a poor lead performance by Affleck and what is ultimately one long forgettable chase.

Michael Jennings (Ben Afleck) is well-groomed and wears exquisitely knotted ties and tailored suits. He is a self-employed contractor who accomplishes tech jobs for participating companies; that is, reverse-engineering new computer breakthroughs. He improves the computer products originally developed by others. If one thinks about it, his work is borderline ethical at best. He is very well compensated for his work, and when his contract is over his short-term memory of the work is erased so that he cannot reveal secrets. The job may be risky but it pays well. His largest contract has been for two months, but now his old square-jawed friend, James Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart) of Allcon offers him a job that will last three years and pay tens of millions of dollars. It involves a system that will change the world by predicting future events. Wow! Jennings agrees and when he awakens he soon discovers that not only is he NOT getting compensated, but that the FBI is on his trail. The FBI is involved because the program that Jennings improved upon was originally designed by a former FBI scientist whose project was terminated. He has been set up by his pal Rethrick, and all he has is a manila envelope with 20 personal items. They include a passkey, a ring, a silver coin, watch, sun glasses, cigarette lighter, a matchbook, bus pass, a partially-completed crossword puzzle, and others. Jennings needs these articles as they are clues to assist him in his personal mission; he has to determine when to employ each to save him from predicaments. Jennings is immediately on the lam, accompanied by sexy Rachel porter (Uma Thurman). He cannot fully remember her as their relationship occurred during the three years that coincided within the same period of his memory removal. Helping out for a very short screen presence is his assistant, Shorty (Paul Giamatti), who is in charge of memory erasure. We find out through convoluted reasoning there is a danger of World War III. The theme is weak while most characters are ill-developed. Screenplay is sub-par. You as the viewer know this is true when a director tries to pad his plot holes and weak story-line with absurd choreography, very long high-speed chases, explosions, constant and annoying screen flashes, and quick editing (don't blink). Riding a motorcycle (with a passenger!) he can outrace and outmaneuver hardened armed men in cars who are shooting at him. Then Dillon, a computer nerd and up to now not a he-man, suddenly morphs into a superhero to save the world from nuclear destruction and takes on . . . and defeats . . . a series of trained and tough security men! Then the last one, the top honcho, snickers with his handgun, figuring he finally has Jennings. Hey, buddy, you just lost your entire gang. Oh, never mind, you'll get yours anyway! Dillon's 21st century movie choices have mostly been less than favorable, and this one proves it. Here the man tries hard enough, but still cannot save the show.

Has the feeling initially that it's going to be an intelligent science fiction movie but slowly and steadily deteriorates into just another action movie. The acting is pretty wooden throughout, but you start by thinking that the intellectual workout is going to make up for the lack of emotional connection. Also the physics that this movie is built around is pretty ridiculous, and claiming that Einstein allowed for seeing into the future isn't really correct as far as I know--he famously demonstrated differential aging when traveling at different relative velocities, and, I suppose, the wormhole thing in theory allows for taking short-cuts between different areas of space-time, but nothing like a crystal ball (to my knowledge). As in all time travel movies, you can't really logically make the plot work if you think about it too much (which is the same problem most physicists have). Aaron Eckhart is reliably disappointing. He actually seems like a decently talented actor, but he pretty much only shows up in junk. He desperately needs some better guidance in choosing scripts, unless the only thing he's after is a big paycheck (get it?), in which case I'm sure he's doing fine. So if you're looking for some challenging Philip K. Dick stuff or something like that, pass on this. "Blade Runner", this isn't. (Not even close to "Minority Report" for that matter.) On the other hand, if you're just looking to kill some time with chases and explosions leading up to the obligatory predictable ending, this might work.