Monday, December 29, 2003

At Least the Protagonist was an Engineer

In is what probably my last December movie review, I will comment briefly on Paycheck, the new Ben Affleck movie which opened at number four this weekend and looks like will sink fast in the theaters.

The movie starts interestingly enough - Affleck is a "reverse engineer" who has the ultimate Non Disclosure Agreement: his memory is wiped every time he finishes a job. Most of his jobs are a few weeks, but he is hired for a job that will last for three years. After he is done and his memory is wiped, the adventure begins.

It's an interesting plot, but some of the details require suspending reality. That in itself is not a problem - that's the point of a lot of movies - but this movie is ruined by "Hollywoodization". I was sucked in for the first 30 minutes but by the time The Big Chase Scene (TM) ensued, the movie had become formulistic. (Why do they always have to have a chase scene? Hasn't everything that CAN be done in a chase been done?)

Two out of Five Stars, or in other words: Rental.

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