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Paycheck

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 30 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Sci-fi | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Dean Georgaris
Philip K. Dick (short story)
Directed by: John Woo
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 25, 2003
DVD: May 18, 2004
Running Time: 119 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for intense action violence and brief language
Starring Ben Affleck, Uma Thurman, Aaron Eckhart, Michael C. Hall, Emily Holmes, Colm Feore, Paul Giamatti, and Ivana Milicevic
John Woo directs this sci-fi action thriller based on a story written by Philip K. Dick about an engineer who wakes up with his short-term memory erased.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Broken Arrow Face/Off Mission: Impossible 2 Windtalkers
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
John Woo's smart thriller Paycheck may not intend to be political, but it's marked as much by its era as post-Watergate thrillers like "The Parallax View" or "Three Days Of The Condor."
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
A nifty science-fiction twist on the old amnesia plot where a guy spends most of a movie trying to remember what he did and why everyone is after him.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Chris Barsanti
Quite honestly, if this had been a more violent film, it wouldnt have been nearly as much fun.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Affleck is in the middle, engaging in derring-do, pitching woo to Uma Thurman and making the whole thing come off as less exciting than it should have been.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
We're left with the painful reality that Paycheck might get Alfred Hitchcock, but it certainly doesn't know Philip K. Dick.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
There are chases that feel way too long, and dialogue that feels flat. Affleck and Thurman make a handsome duo, but there's no spark between the actors.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Mark Holcomb
Woo's film is in some ways closer to Dick's -- and his own -- pulp roots, and if he lazily quotes himself (and, inexplicably, Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly") once too often, he at least gets loose, spirited performances from his cast -- Uma's post-"Kill Bill" gravitas notwithstanding.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The amazing thing about John Woo's steely, impersonal adaptation of Philip K. Dick sci-fi story about a tech genius whose memory is erased...is how it vanishes in front of our eyes even as we watch it.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Unfortunately, after watching Paycheck, you may wish you had the picture's gimmickry at your disposal, so you could erase your own memory of it.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
Woo has never been particularly good at human stuff, and to the extent that Paycheck is, or should be, a love story, it feels forced.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Surprisingly . . . ept given that it is basically a dumb movie about smart people. This smooth but bland thriller may be the best we could expect from such a collaboration.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Jon Strickland
Paycheck is too smart for a mindless actioneer, and too slick to capture the full moral weight of Dick's dystopia.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Running mainly on adrenaline and a gimmick, it's different from other holiday movies in that it's not ambitious, earnest or overblown, and it obviously wasn't made with one eye on the Oscars.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Maybe Affleck was drawn to this movie because it involves the loss of memory. Who wouldn't want to forget "Gigli," and now this?
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The silliness only slows down for a few hokey romantic interludes. But if you like to see stuff crash or blow up, this is your movie.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Begins with a thought-provoking idea from Philip K. Dick, exploits it for its action and plot potential, but never really develops it.
Read Full Review >Film Threat K.J. Doughton
Longtime fans of John Woo, who have come to accept operatic, lead-slinging death dances as an integral part of the directors powerful aesthetic, will probably be unsatisfied with this neutered variation on his earlier, superior works.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Woo's customary action-film pyrotechnics gather more substance than usual from the implausible but inventive plot, drawn from a Philip K. Dick story.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The bogus Seattle setting creates an additional problem for local moviegoers. Because we know Seattle doesn't have a subway, giant FBI building or newspapers called Telegraph or Tribune, we're jarred out of the story so regularly that it leaves us slightly punch-drunk.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Paycheck is one of those movies in which all the ingenuity went into the original idea and none into its execution.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Affleck is no more convincing as a flesh-and-blood action than as a superbrain, Thurman is cruelly photographed and director Woo appears to be imitating his own worst work.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
The sort of noisy nonsense that Woo's earlier action movies made irrelevant, but alas not extinct.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
Uninspired star turns from Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman suggest something less than full belief in this quickly forgettable thriller.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
With a script that waffles between being hilariously absurd and insultingly stupid, and action scenes that won't cause anyone's pulse to skip a beat, Paycheck is less appealing than a lump of coal in a Christmas stocking.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The story, adapted by Dean Georgaris, doesn't come within a light year of science-fiction plausibility, and after a while Woo gives up trying to sell it and reverts to the action choreography that made him a master of Hong Kong martial-arts movies.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Isn't a bad movie, until John Woo remembers that he's John Woo and we remember that Ben Affleck is Ben Affleck.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
Paycheck is a terribly muddled mess, a Hitchcock homage (with generous, obvious nods to The Birds, Strangers on a Train and North by Northwest) by a great filmmaker trying to say a great deal with so very little.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The title of this limp retread of "Minority Report" -- both films are based on stories by Philip K. Dick -- presumably refers to the reason the big names involved did this movie.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Maybe its time for Woo to finally make that musical he keeps talking about.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Represents such a professional nadir for each of its principals that you wish better for them in the new year.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.6 (out of 10) based on 30 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
[Anonymous] gave it a6:
THe story has premise, but John Woo's excecution renders the movie mediocre. Even the action ain't all that great. There are moments when the brillinace of the sci-fi story does surface, particularly consequences of looking into the future, but it's not enough to save this film from being merely mediocre stuff.
Daniel gave it an 8:
Highly entertaining movie with some very clever ideas about time travel. Well done!
Yeignipt O gave it a 10:
I specially like the part when the girl is playing rachel at the cafe. remember the future.
[Anonymous] gave it a 10:
This is really a thought out movie for cerebral exercise.
Rob M. gave it a 10:
Well done film!
George B. gave it a 10:
[***SPOILERS***] This is one paycheck you WILL want to cash in! High flying stunts, thought provoking ending, where Ben Affleck finds out his most trusted lover did it, and high flying special effects make this a winner!
Barbara D. gave it a 0:
Just plain crappy. Weird sci fi, hard to follow. But I don't like sci fi, so maybe my opinion isn't very accurate.
