Wednesday, 3 March 2004
Paycheck
Disclaimer up front: just thinking about how I'd try and describe my reactions to Paycheck wore me out. You at least get the option of reading the rest or not.
Watching this film, I was overcome with the feeling that someone pitched making a "B" film with A-list actors. We'll overlook the question of whether Ben Affleck really merits being called "A-list." Uma Thurman and even Paul Giamatti could qualify.
Thurman's laboratory reminded me nothing more of some sort of mad scientist's playhouse. Explain to me again what exactly she does - besides play god. Sheesh, Woo! If your movie's black-and-white morality play wasn't already obvious enough in the storytelling then you need to fix it, not hang out flashing neon signs.
Being a geek means that I couldn't stop myself from choking on the holes in the movie's logic. Like: if Affleck could predict every detail of his future, that would mean he'd have to follow every possible "what if" (e.g. only by escaping death at the hands of the FBI could he board the bus; only once on the bus could he find himself in front of the law offices; and so on).
So that would mean that he'd have to be able to see potential futures as well as "the" future. If that's the case, then the machine is more of a Web browser for time, not linear story viewer. And if that's so, then war is not the only possible outcome of its being made public knowledge. Making me wonder why I should bother to care. QED.
Not that it really matters: suspension of disbelief is de rigueur in science fiction. I'm willing to deal with that. But do I also have to deal with cartoonish characters and a tacked-on happy ending? I mean, come on - the only thing missing from the "oh ha ha, I won the lottery" scene was a sitcom's laugh track.
A friend pointed out his biggest bone to pick: if Affleck repeatedly erases his memories, then he never learns during the lost periods of time. That could work for a while, especially since he's meant to be so brilliant (pfft, right). But this is high-tech - don't you suppose that after only a couple of years, he'd be outpaced by the technology he was supposed to reverse-engineer? Who would you rather hire: a cheap-but-brilliant student fresh out of university or someone who has five-year-old tech skills?
Small wonder that people are surprised that the US is losing jobs to off-shore outsourcing, if this film passes for common wisdom.
I don't know where to lay the blame: John Woo, Ben Affleck (and Uma et al., seeing as how they did say "yes" to this crap) or Philip K. Dick. I admit that I've never read Dick's short stories, so it's hard for me to say if they really provide good source material. But look at others: Minority Report is pure saccharin-coated Spielberg preaching; Total Recall is a fun Verhoeven/Schwarzenegger "things go boom"-a-thon; Blade Runner is just plain incredible.
Obviously there's at least some adaptability to Dick's stories (Blade Runner is famous for the amount of liberties it took). For any recipe, the final experience is in the hands of the chef in the kitchen and the service at the table. Unfortunately, it'd be a lot easier to send back a bad meal (or skip the tip) than to get back these two hours of my life.
2 / 5 : the only thing saving this from a "1" is that there's still room for much worse (because, believe it or not, I've seen worse - much worse)
Comments
Philip K. Dick is definitely worth reading. Minority Report and Paycheck would have both been better films had they followed the original stories.
Paycheck was awful. You're dead on about Minority Report. In the end it had little to do with Dick after Spielberg mangled it.
Rumor has it there are several other Dick short stories slated for the big screen. Maybe one of these days somebody will do it right.