- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
80John 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."
-
70A 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.
-
70Quite honestly, if this had been a more violent film, it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.
-
67Affleck 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.
-
63There 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.
-
63We're left with the painful reality that Paycheck might get Alfred Hitchcock, but it certainly doesn't know Philip K. Dick.
-
63Slick and slight.
-
60in the end, Paycheck never quite cashes out.
-
60Woo'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.
-
58The 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.
-
50Begins with a thought-provoking idea from Philip K. Dick, exploits it for its action and plot potential, but never really develops it.
-
50Unfortunately, after watching Paycheck, you may wish you had the picture's gimmickry at your disposal, so you could erase your own memory of it.
-
50Woo's customary action-film pyrotechnics gather more substance than usual from the implausible but inventive plot, drawn from a Philip K. Dick story.
-
50Woo has never been particularly good at human stuff, and to the extent that Paycheck is, or should be, a love story, it feels forced.
-
50Running 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.
-
50Maybe Affleck was drawn to this movie because it involves the loss of memory. Who wouldn't want to forget "Gigli," and now this?
-
50Paycheck is one of those movies in which all the ingenuity went into the original idea and none into its execution.
-
50Longtime fans of John Woo, who have come to accept operatic, lead-slinging death dances as an integral part of the director’s powerful aesthetic, will probably be unsatisfied with this neutered variation on his earlier, superior works.
-
50The 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.
-
50Paycheck is too smart for a mindless actioneer, and too slick to capture the full moral weight of Dick's dystopia.
-
50Surprisingly . . . 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.
-
50A fun if dumb movie.
-
50The 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.
-
40Affleck 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.
-
40The sort of noisy nonsense that Woo's earlier action movies made irrelevant, but alas not extinct.
-
40Uninspired star turns from Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman suggest something less than full belief in this quickly forgettable thriller.
-
38The 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.
-
38With 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.
-
38Paycheck is a bogus journey.
-
38Isn't a bad movie, until John Woo remembers that he's John Woo and we remember that Ben Affleck is Ben Affleck.
-
30Paycheck 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.
-
25The 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.
-
20Maybe it’s time for Woo to finally make that musical he keeps talking about.
-
20Represents such a professional nadir for each of its principals that you wish better for them in the new year.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 15 out of 26
-
Mixed: 4 out of 26
-
Negative: 7 out of 26
-
[Anonymous]6
-
DWP1025899