Paycheck - One of the worst movies ever!

[takyris]

I'm sorry to hear that it isn't a good movie. I really liked the short story that it's (apparently loosely) based upon.

Oh, and Pkitty, from what I remember:

Spoiler

The story is about a guy who goes to work for a cover time-travel program. He opts to give up his paycheck in exchange for giving himself what appear to be random little trinkets, but which are actually items that suddenly start becoming amazingly handy at just the right times -- a cheap bus token gets him quickly onto a bus to escape the government guys who want to abduct him, a broken coin ends up being a gang token that gets him into a private meeting with someone, that kind of thing. As I recall, there's no living time travel, but you can send a little crane thingie back into the past (or the future) and yank things into your present.

In the short story, our hero gets betrayed by the gal at the end -- she's holding a safe deposit key that he thought he'd hidden somewhere -- and then he sees this little mechanical arm come through a hole in the space-time continuum, yank the key out of her hands, and disappear. And he says something like, "Ha! I knew he'd take care of me," and the "he" he's referring to is the him that worked for the time-travel company.

Apologies in advance -- read that a long time ago, and am pretty hazy on lots of it.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Okay, I have to step in here, but "Ben should be great"? Affleck? Ben Affleck? I'm hoping that there's another Ben in the film I don't know about because Ben Affleck is one of the superstars I'm at a loss to explain (Freddy Prinze, Jr is another). Why is he popular? I don't think he can act, and he's a sucking black hole when it comes to charisma.

At least Freddy has come to know he is not an actor and is moving from in front to behind by writing screen plays but Freddy is 2.5 times the actor Afflack is.

 

[Ruined]

Exactly what I thought when I saw the commercials and trailer...."I liked this movie...when it was Total Recall!!

Beat me to the punch. Yeah, I caught the very brief Philip K. Dick credit on the TV commercials, and was saying the exact same thing.

 

[CCamfield]

I saw Paycheck yesterday.

Okay...so Uma and Ben should be great. John Woo, the director, should be great.

Sadly, Woo has lost what genius he had. I don't think he's made any films in Hollywood in comparison with his HK flicks.

 

[Shadowdancer]

I'm sorry to hear that it isn't a good movie. I really liked the short story that it's (apparently loosely) based upon.

Oh, and Pkitty, from what I remember:

Well, the movie has some major differences from the short story, apparently. I won't go into all of them, but basically:

Spoiler

In the movie, the project involves seeing into the future, but you can't reach into the past with a crane or anything. But you can record images seen. Affleck's character has seen that the company he is working for kills him once the project is over. So he gives up his paycheck, and replaces his personal items that were to be returned to him with 19 innocent and seemingly meaningless items.

But as Takyris said, the 19 items come in handy at the appropriate time, and allow Affleck and his girlfriend, Uma Thurman's character, to beat the company's plan and destroy the machine.

And another reason he is willing to give up his paycheck, which was stock options in the company which were worth $90 million (before Affleck destroyed the machine and the company), was because he had hidden a winning lottery ticket worth $92 million.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Oh, and while I agree that Paycheck was not a great movie, it is far from being the worst movie ever, or even one of the worst. It's a pretty average sci-fi thriller, no more, no less.

 

[Arnwyn]

Okay...so Uma and Ben should be great. John Woo, the director, should be great.

Just like Villano I'm going to step in here too, but go a bit further: What are you talking about? "Ben should be great?" Guh? And John Woo? C'mon. John Woo lost it a long time ago... right when he came to Hollywood, actually. Broken Arrow was his last decent movie... and it was only decent.

I'm surprised that you're surprised the movie was bad. A Ben Affleck and John Woo movie? Bad? Say it's not so!

(All IMO, of course!)

 

[WizarDru]

Just like Villano I'm going to step in here too, but go a bit further: What are you talking about? "Ben should be great?" Guh? And John Woo? C'mon. John Woo lost it a long time ago... right when he came to Hollywood, actually. Broken Arrow was his last decent movie... and it was only decent.

I'm surprised that you're surprised the movie was bad. A Ben Affleck and John Woo movie? Bad? Say it's not so!

(All IMO, of course!)

Well, I haven't enjoyed anything that John Woo has done since he left HK, but some folks have. Broken Arrow, Face/Off, MI:2 and Windtalkers were all successful films, which is the only way that Hollywood measures. Do I think any of them could hold a candle to The Killer or Better Tomorrow? No. But if you watch Hard Boiled, you can see how Woo got here.

 

[barsoomcore]

Hard-Boiled broke the John Woo "thing", if you ask me. John Woo jumped the shark with that film.

Not that it's a bad film. I love Hard-Boiled, but it turns all the knobs up to eleven, and once you've done that, where is there left to go? Woo took the action movie to the absolute limit, and now he seems to be stumbling along, unaware of his own accomplishments and without any means of finding a new path.

He seems to have nothing left to say and so his movies are empty. Even with something as cynical and cold-hearted as Hard-Boiled, at least you felt like Woo was trying to tell us something -- even if what he was saying was pretty ugly. But nowadays there's just nothing there.

He's still capable of visual poetry -- there are two or three shots from M:I-2 that take my breath away, but do those make the whole movie worthwhile? They do not.

 

[Kesh]

Hm. I kinda like Affleck. What's the beef against him?