Silly, Sort-of-Fun "Paycheck" Doesn’t Quite Cash In

It seems like every review of a Hollywood film directed by Hong Kong auteur John Woo requires a dissertation on his brilliant Far East career. In a way, it’s almost like beating a dead horse. The man is an astounding director, his work in Asia some of the best to be seen over the last two decades. Yet on these shores only one film, the startling good and absurdly unhinged action spectacular “Face/Off,” has risen to this oft-copied master’s foreign language heights. From “Hard Target” to “M:I2” to “Windtalkers,” only moments of Woo’s pyrotechnic talent is evident, working in the corporate Hollywood world stifling the maestro’s more go-for-broke tendencies.

In a way, that’s what sort of makes the director’s latest film “Paycheck” so nifty. Not really a good film by, it is still an awful lot of fun much of time. A loopy adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story of the same name, the whole movie has a what-the-hell devil-may-care attitude that’s brazenly refreshing. It is as if Woo decided he needed to do a movie with no real weight or significance, almost no merit whatsoever, the picture’s only reason for existing so the director can toss off a few signature moves with an almost sarcastically winking aplomb.

Ben Affleck rebounds from “Gigli” portraying much sought-after reverse engineer Michael Jennings. His professional position so-called because the job entails taking apart already manufactured hardware and then working in reverse to figure out how it was made, then improving it for a corporate rival in the rebuilding. His paychecks for doing this are steep, but the price to himself is equally high. In order to make the big bucks Jennings cannot have any connection to the new material he’s constructed or the company that now owns the patents. This is accomplished by erasing all the man’s memories, eradicating all knowledge Michael has of the project from beginning to end.

But these pinpoint cerebral erasures are beginning to take their toll, and the engineer’s best friend and professional manager Shorty (“American Splendor” actor Paul Giamatti, back to slumming in second banana roles) is worried. Not only is he the one that negotiates the majority of Jennings' paychecks, he’s also the one who performs the memory wipes on his friend’s brain and he’s starting to see them slowing down his confidant's mental and physical reflexes. More than that, Shorty just feels Mike is giving up too much just to score a five-digit payday, no amount of money worth giving up one of the most vital pieces of his humanity.

But Jennings isn’t one to go in for ethical and moral squabbling. Besides, when former schoolmate and billionaire industrialist Jimmy Rethrick (a smarmy Aaron Eckhart, “The Core”) offers him six-to-seven digits worth of stock options to take part in a three-year project, Michael figures he’s out of the reverse engineer business for good. This one score will be enough to set him up for life. No more mind wipes, no more shady deals with corporate raiding mega-companies, a life of leisure and margaritas only a few years of hard work away.

Just over 1,000-days later, Michael wakes up to discover all his engineering know-how has not led to the life of wine and roses he dreamed of. Instead, he finds to his horror that all he has to show for his work is an envelope of 20, seemingly randomly selected everyday items (sun glasses, a paperclip, a quarter and other things all in the same vein) and his own signature validating the forfeiture of his stock options in Rethrick’s company. Not only that, it appears the FBI is after him for being an industrial terrorist and spy, while menacing figures from Jimmy’s company, led by the sinister Wolfe (coolly played by the icy Colm Feore, “Chicago”), seem intent on killing him. Then there is biologist Rachel Porter (Uma Thurman, putting all those “Kill Bill” movies to good use), a woman not only connected to Rethrick and the 20-item envelope, but someone Michael also suspects he used to love.

Now the clock is ticking and Jennings has only so long to figure out how all the pieces he’s left for himself fit together and to decipher what exactly he’s spent the last three-years building before he ends up dead. But the truth is more frightening than anything the engineer could have ever expected, the possibility of a devastating world war hinging on Mike successfully remembering all he was contracted to forget.

It’s an interesting premise. Would you willingly give up your own memories for a big enough paycheck? And, what do those memories, even the most insignificant ones, ultimately say about the people we are and the lives we lead? It is fascinating, and Dick is by far the unqualified master of asking just those sorts of questions. Yet, while Woo does seem genuinely interested, he and writer Dean Georgaris (forthcoming “The Manchurian Candidate” remake starring Denzel Washington) don’t really feel the need to invest much in the way of gravity to it all. If anything, “Paycheck” is a movie made by a director at play, Woo whimsically sashaying from scene to scene with child-like grace.

Like his Hong Kong action farce “Once a Thief” with Chow Yun-Fat, this is a movie full of weighty issues made by a director more interested in toying with them than taking them seriously. “Paycheck” is one big kittenish tango, a movie adept with the motions and movements of a thriller yet insists on casting a spell of mischievous intimacy that’s at times downright silly. In fact, the director takes his trademark melodrama up to such a fevered pitch, it’s almost impossible to fathom that for even a moment Woo is asking the audience to take any of this seriously.

That’s a huge shame in some ways. This is a film that starts our exceedingly well and shows great promise on numerous fronts. It is rather disappointing to watch the picture devolve, almost instantaneously, into such a loony lark, director and writer slanting things to such an absurdity I could almost feel Dick sit up in his grave and scream. Yet, I couldn’t ever take my eyes off of it, and darned if it still isn’t one of the most brazenly entertaining action films to come down the pike this year. There are moments here that just sing – the final shootout and fisticuffs come to mind – and while many of them are just derivative variations on what Woo has done before, this is still a director that can stage a stare-down the likes of which haven’t been seen since Sergio Leone.

Don’t get me wrong, “Paycheck” isn’t a very good movie. Thurman has absolutely no character to play and while, to the film’s credit, she’s not just a woman in jeopardy – the leggy beauty whips out far more punishment on others than is laid out on her – that doesn’t mean she has anything to do, either. This isn’t a character, it s fantasy; a brainy superwoman with supermodel looks and an iron fist. Also, Georgaris’ script is so thin it’s hard to believe Woo managed to craft an almost two-hour film out of it, some scenes in “Paycheck” going on far past their expiration date. I also didn’t like how people seemed to see themselves as a third person in their memories. Maybe there are those out there that do see themselves as if residing outside their own bodies in their psyches, but I’m not one of them, so watching Jennings do just that really annoyed me after a while.

Really, though, there is enough here to make “Paycheck” a decent enough ride. Woo knows how to make action sequences sing, and there is an effervescent prankish streak permeating the entire picture that’s borderline infectious. While the movie doesn’t quite cash all the way in, dropping a few bucks on a matinee sure isn’t going to hurt either. Better yet, wait for video and make it a double feature with “Once a Thief,” a smile certain to be your friend come end of evening.

Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)

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