Paycheck
Posted by 7th on July 31, 2004

I won't lie to ya. I don't have much love in my heart for Ben Affleck. In that regard, it would appear that (shocker of shockers) J-Lo and I actually have something in common. But I digress.

I first noticed Assflack in Kevin Smith's film Mallrats as the manager of the Fashionable Male clothing store. You know, the guy who liked to have sex with women in a very uncomfortable place... I didn't think much of his acting skills at that time. In fact, I didn't really notice him again until Armageddon came out, and by then I'd mostly forgotten him... only upon a repeat viewing of Mallrats did I realize he was the obnoxious pedopheliac assfucker, which again, is strangely appropriate, since watching his films makes me feel violated and somewhat dirty.

With Armageddon Ben began a tendency to resort to action flciks when his "introspective" or "feel-good" pieces went to shit. He had a moderate hit last year with Daredevil, then followed it up with Gigli, hailed as one of the worst films since Ishtar by innumerable critics, and myself. Jersey Girl was in the can, but was delayed after his highly publicized break up with Lopez (not to mention advance word that it was a piece of shit), who immediately went out and supposedly got knocked up by her current husband (co-dependency issues anyone?)

He needed a hit to bring him back from the depths of suckitude. So again, he sought out an action flick. This has backfired on him before, namely with the abyssmal Reindeer Games, a film that would cause epileptic seizures in the blind. But it seemed that with Paycheck he had a surefire hit... proven writing source... acclaimed Asian action director... flashy special FX... Uma Thurman for the hot ass factor (though I personally think she looks like someone's been using her as a punching bag... the hornbeaked bitch has boxer's nose, for Christ's sake.) But sometimes even the best of components still add up to a turd based on the poor quality of one piece of corn... That's right. Affleck is that shitty piece of corn.

Assflack is Michael Jennings, a reverse engineer in the near future. Companies pay him big bucks to be locked up in a room with their competitor's technology for months at a time... He takes it apart, figures out how it works, makes improvements, and alters it enough to where it can't be actionable under copyright laws...

Then, they cut him a check, and erase those three months from his memory to cover their tracks. An old buddy comes to him and tells him he needs him for a year on a secret project. The paycheck is enough for Jennings to retire on... He heartily agrees...

When he wakes up, he goes to get his paycheck, and is told that he liquidated all the funds... all that's left in his box is an envelope with several items inside... a bus token, a piece of paper with a lottery number on it, and so on... He quickly discovers that he is being pursued by henchman under the employ of his buddy... In each instance where he's about to be caught or killed, something in his bag of tricks helps him escape unharmed...

During his search for the truth, he runs into Uma Thurman's character, a scientist who was working in the same building during his forgotten year of work... Apparently, they became lovers over that time (hope he didn't buy her a ring!) and she agrees to help him escape and find the truth...

As he continues to be able to thwart danger by using his clues, he realizes that somehow, he must've figured out a way to see the future and set all this up for himself... as it turns out, the project he was working on was just that... a machine that could see the future... and whilst testing it, he saw that its construction would ultimately lead to the end of the world... so he sabotaged it and set up all these clues for himself to ensure its destruction...

The problem is that the steps he takes connecting A to Z just aren't that compelling... You have your steretypical car chases... your flashbacks and secret messages... plans within plans... an early scene shows him working out with a staff... you know from this scene that at one point he'll get in a fight where he uses this skill... you also know that, most likely, it was only put in because Woo can't help but put at least ONE martial arts-themed scene in all his movies...

We've seen all of this before, usually in other movies based on Philip K. Dick stories... For some reason, several of the scenes made me think back to a William Gibson adaptation, the atrocious Keanu Reeves actioner Johnny Pneumonic... at least that movie had Ice T dressed up as a giant dog going for it... this was of course before he played a giant kangaroo in Tank Girl... and now plays a former shitty rapper who can't act on Law and Order...

And par for the course, Assflack just can't act... he emotes like a spoiled child whose had his Cheerios taken away. The chemistry between he and Thurman is non-existant... You just don't believe that she'd ever stoop to fall for such a schmuck...

And don't even get me started about the logic inherent in this film... If he saw the future BEFORE planning the envelope, then the future Assflack wouldn't have had the little clues, and would've died inside the interrogation room... or at the bus station... and if he had, then there would've been no future for him to see of the next obstacle, as he'd already be dead in that time line. Hello? Continuity, are you there?

If it had been me, and I had a machine that saw the future, I'd not only get the winning lottery numbers for a certain date... I'd get the lottery numbers of every lottery for the next fifteen years... By the time it was done, I'd have enough money to buy out his buddy's company and prevent the world's end without doing anything more than visiting the local convenience store... But that wouldn't make for a very exciting movie would it? It would probably star Nicholas Cage... and be directed by young Ms. Coppola as a follow up for Lost in Translation, and would have several long, introspective conversations between Cage and his reflection on the ceiling of his bedroom as he rolls around in his garbage bags of cash...

The whole movie is one big ass long, drawn out cliche... It nearly put me to sleep on three occasions... And the time play just beggared logic. For instance... Assflack leaves a hidden message on Thurman's bathroom mirror that appears when she runs herself a shower, and the steam collects on the glass... One of his buddy's cronies sees it on the camera system, and knows that she's in on it... So if Assflack had access to the future, wouldn't he have known that his secret message wouldn't be secret at all, and if not, what OTHER unforeseen elements did he miss that could've altered the outcome? What if his buddy would at one point use the machine to watch porn of the future and spooges all over the controls, short circuiting it so that he has to fix that before using it to see the alternate timeline he's created, thus causing him to take longer in setting his trap and bringing it all down around him in one great big fucking clusterfuck?!?! DIDN'T THINK OF THAT DIDJA, ASSFLACK?!? HOW 'BOUT THEM APPLES, EH BEN?!?! HOW 'BOUT THEM FUCKING APPLES, YOU CONSTRUCTION WORKING, OIL DRILLING, COMIC BOOK DRAWING, KINGPIN BEATING, UNDERAGE ASS CORNHOLING, SINGLE DAD DYKE FUCKER?!?!

Ah, I'm getting all emotional over how much shit this movie sucked. I feel betrayed by my own senses for the fact that I spent money on it... And what's the worst? Before this movie, I had a fairly strong level of respect for John Woo (even though he's also responsible for that piece of shit Jean Claude Van Damme film Hard Target...)

It upsets me so much, that I need to vent... I need to purge myself of this film... and short of going out and beating on a random innocent Asian, I'll take the more civilized route, and express my frustration through the art of interpretational haiku (yes, I kow haiku is Japanese and Woo is Chinese... the fuck I care?)

-=7th=-