Famine's Review: Paycheck

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Famine

Famine

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An inauspicious start. Minus a point for retaining the American spelling of "cheque". Minus another point for retaining American English subtitles. Minus several points for starring Ben Affleck - I remember DareDevil, and doubt I will ever be allowed to forget it.

BUT, it IS based on a short story by Philip K. Dick - the man responsible for the stories behind Total Recall and Blade Runner. And Minority Report.

It starts off well in typical Dick style - quasi near-futuristic land, introduces Affleck's character well, although it drifts off a little when he gets his mind wiped of 8 weeks of R&D.

Then it goes weird. Nothing in the next 60 minutes of the film makes sense, apart from the hideously telegraphed plot ("How can he engineer his escape... unless he'd seen into the future?"... "I wonder what the machine he was working on is"... etc.). There's some decent action in there, with a decent car chase. But John Woo just cannot get away from the whole guns-pointing-at-each-other-from-main-protagonists, and symbolic doves (symbolising that he's made a great deal of money from having little imagination).

It rolls by okay I guess, but it's just another formulaic piece of pap. Beats the hell out of "Red Water" though.
 
I watched this last night. MY biggest gripe, was that when they infected Affleck before the 3 year stint, Woo shouldn't have shown us anything in the next 15 minutes. What I'm trying to say, they should have shown the single injection as a double injection. Affleck remembering the first injection, then realizing he just had his "forget everything injection"

We didn't need to know that Uma worked there, that could have been caught up in the plot line.

I did sit and watch teh deleted scenes afterward. All I can say, is "good thing". In some movies, it's nice to see the deleted scenes and they often do add to the movie. These certainly didn't.

All things considered, it's a half drunk, bored out of my mind rental.

AO
 
I saw this on Christmas. Or Thanksgiving, I forget. It wasn't terrible, but I wouldn't ever watch it again.

Horrible ending. "Ooh, lottery tickets!"
 
Klos, did you see the alternate ending? It was even worse.

Yes, even worse.

AO
 
This is by far the worst movie I have seen this year. Nowadays, to have a hit with sci fi, you need a REALLY good movie, and there's not a thing new or interesting or well-executed to be found here. I am waiting for the day when the Hollywood bigwigs start recognizing Mr. John Woo for what he is, a B-movie director at best. The slow-mo shots have been done to death, and WHAT IS WITH THE DOVES? I thought for sure I wouldn't have to see doves in a futuristic sci-fi movie, but there they were, and what can you do but laugh?

John Woo needs to be kicked out of the big-budget movie arena as soon as possible. Maybe they can film it and we'll get a nice slow motion shot of him skidding across the backlots on his ass, while he frightens some pigeons who then flutter overhead and sh** all over his head.

Why did I see this in theatres? I need to hammer it into my head that it's probably better to read Dick than watch his work get mangled onscreen...
 
Holy (insert expletive here)! Did you just agree with me about John Woo?
 

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