Paycheck (2003)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2003
	Director: John Woo (Broken Arrow, Face/Off)
	Actors: Ben Affleck (Armageddon, Argo), Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight), Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 27.03.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Jennings (Affleck) is reverse-engineering new products for a concurrent company and getting his memory erased afterwards for confidentiality reasons. After his last and biggest project, he find out that he has been manipulated.
Review: I remembered this movie to be better, more fun to watch. When watching it this time I found a lot of weak points during the first half hour in the scientific basis (OK it is a SF movie but there are limits to extrapolations: reading the palm of the hand to predict the future!), the logic (how can an engineer learn and stay competitive if you erase his memory after each project?) and most importantly the motivation of the characters (why do they want to kill him by the way?). After that came the fun part, when the main character manages to escape using the few items he sent himself. But in the third act it becomes confused again and sometimes laughable (the usual face off between two characters with gun drawn in front of the face of the other) in spite of the best efforts of the good three main actors. I think to remember the same structure and weaknesses in other John Woo movies: Face/Off, Broken Arrow, Mission Impossible 2. Paycheck was the last movie he shot in Hollywood. Maybe I should finally watch the one he did next in China and that has been sitting on the Blu-ray shelf for a while: Red Cliff.
Rating: 4 /10