September 2, 2007

Paycheck

Paycheck is a full-length movie based off a Philip K. Dick short story by the same name. Philip K. Dick is one of my favorite authors, and many of his stories get turned into movies that I like. Paycheck isn't the greatest movie, but I still like the premise and the ideas involved, even if I think the writers failed to create a logically consistent plot. Philip K. Dick might have been a little crazy, but his stories always made sense. The reason the movie's plot doesn't work is because you are shown enough information to know how and why the protagonist, Michael Jennings, comes to his decisions, but that information is inconsistent with what he ends up doing. If you can get past that, then this is a decent action-thriller.

I don't want to give away any spoilers, but the Paycheck movie basically takes the simple and interesting science fiction premise of the short story and builds a longer plot around it. The premise is really something that can be presented in a much shorter time frame, which is why most of the movie is John Woo action. At least it wasn't crazy over-the-top action like some of the other movies he's directed, although there are a few times when things are just a little too convenient. And I won't say Ben Affleck's acting is very good, but I always like seeing Uma Thurman act.

We also discovered something interesting while watching this movie, though. Kiba seemed to really like it. He watched most of it, and the ending, and sat comfortably the whole time to do so. At the climax, when there were lots of explosions with loud noises and bright flashes on the screen, he even got down and went closer to the front, instead of running away like the other cats would do.

Posted by josuah at September 2, 2007 6:12 AM UTC+00:00