158 - Paycheck

    A guy makes a living by reverse-engineering projects, followed by having his memory wiped so that he can never give the secrets away.  He works on a long-term project, and finds that when he's done, there's an effort made to kill him.  To continue explaining things would ruin some of the surprise of the movie.
    This was based on a story by Philip K. Dick, which was part of why I wanted to see it.  The plot is excellent, and would make a remarkable movie.  Except that this was directed by John Woo, and starred Ben Affleck.  And it suffers so badly under this direction.
    The problems with this movie are really difficult to explain.  The script isn't terrible, but it's not great.  The movie is very brightly lit.  There aren't many parts that are in shadow.  But the editing and the framing of the shots are really confusing.  We often get poor views of people or things, and it just makes things confusing.
    The action is lackluster.  It alternated between being absurdly gimmicky, or intolerably predictable.  And like everything Woo does, there are some birds mixed in there.
    I actually figured most of the story out pretty quickly.  I did make one bad prediction later on.  While the story played out as I expected it to, I can credit most of that to another directorial choice.  The foreshadowing is ridiculous!  Every single thing we see pays off in an obvious way.
    I would like to see this story told with a more polished script, and with a more visionary director.  In the meantime, this is a very sad disappointment.
    And one other observation.  The guy is a reverse engineer.  And he gets his memory wiped after each project.  Wouldn't he become obsolete really fast?  He wouldn't learn anything.