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Paycheck: Special Collector's Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (22nd June 2009). |
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The Film
 With his action movie beginnings in Hong Kong, John Woo made a name for himself as an action movie god. But his doves could not be contained in that great country, taking flight across the ocean to Hollywood, to grace the screens in English without need for subtitles (except for the deaf and hard of hearing). How could one of the greatest action directors go wrong with having worked with big stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme, John Travolta, Nicholas Cage, Tom Cruise and Ben Affleck? The doves still flew and the heroes still jumped through the air with two pistols, but now the writing was terrible. Woo never laid a finger on a typewriter, computer, pen, paper or other screenwriting implement to try and create his own full vision in the states, creating a huge gap in his writing filmography between "Hard Boiled" (1992) and "Red Cliff" (2008), both of which were awesome. Every screenplay of Woo’s American filmography is filled with some of the most ridiculous action plots and lines, that make them beautiful in a way that his other movies don’t quite match, bringing in a ‘stupid puppy syndrome.’ It’s almost like going to the pet store to get a new dog, finding a dog that looks really great and appealing, until it starts running its face into glass repeatedly, without ever realizing what’s wrong. That sheer puppy stupidity makes it almost more appealing, a second level of cuteness that John Woo’s American movies push to the edge, giving “Paycheck” (2003) an "8" on the stupid puppy scale. Philip K. Dick receives a lot of credit for his role in science fiction, and I’m sure it’s deserving, but film adaptations of his work all seem to revolve around memories and technology. “Paycheck” is no different as Ben Affleck plays Michael Jennings, a reverse engineer who routinely has his memory wiped to avoid some strange liability that the company would incur from stealing other people’s inventions. Yet on his latest assignment, instead of receiving his usual payment, or ‘paycheck’ (how titular), he finds that he has placed an assortment of seemingly random items within a safe deposit box. Soon he is taken into custody by the FBI for some crime he apparently committed in the course of his previous assignment and the disappearance of another scientist. Using the items in the envelope he received, he manages to escape the FBI and get away to discover what he did, reuniting with a woman he fell in love with before he had his memory erased (Uma Thurman), discovering that he helped build a machine that can predict the future and may lead to nuclear war. Now he has to stop all of it. Just looking at the other Philip K. Dick adaptations that I’ve seen, much of their success comes from the incredible world that is created for the film. “Blade Runner” (1982) has a cult following based on it’s gritty future, “Total Recall” (1990) lets Paul Verhoeven play around on Mars and a bizarre future world and “Minority Report” (2002) has a great futuristic look of Steven Spielberg’s early 2000’s that I can’t wait to see on Blu-ray. “Paycheck” on the other hand exists in a quasi-futuristic present day that doesn’t really play around in it’s own world with sprinklings of futuristic technology and lingo that seem to have no place in the movie making it seem all the more ridiculous and stupid, but in a fairly fun way like Paul Giamatti’s line ‘If his brain goes 1 c above 43, he’s a vege.’ I’m not sure to put the blame on Woo or the production designers and producers. But the biggest problem is that they give action-directing genius John Woo so much expository dialogue to deal with and so much ridiculous setting there’s no room for crazy action in the way I wanted, but when it gets thrown in it seems out of place and ridiculous. The acting doesn’t help much as Affleck, Thurman and Aaron Eckhart seem to be in it for a paycheck of their own, which is also the kind of bad pun you could expect from the movie’s writing that doesn’t help their acting either. There are some good side appearances from Giamatti, Joe Morton of “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” (1991) fame and Michael C. Hall’s first film appearance before he became the lovable sociopath on “Dexter” (2006-Present). Everyone obviously has done better work, it’s always funny seeing where Giamatti will pop up before he became a leading man and otherwise it’s just an embarrassing, though funny, mark on their filmographies. At the end, “Paycheck” delivers some stupid action and dialogue that could be worth your time if you’re looking for a bad movie fix, but really doesn’t go the full mile in terms of being a good action movie or a purely enjoyable bad movie. Woo seems limited by the world that’s there, and is better off directing his own scripts than picking up what Hollywood producers throw on his desk, but what do you expect from the same writer who has managed only to put out big budget with big named actor, trash like “Tristan + Isolde” (2006) or “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life” (2003).
Video
With the 1080p 24/fps, 2.35:1 aspect ratio and the AVC MPEG-4 encoding, I expected a better Blu-ray transfer out of the movie, but it seems to fall just short of expectations. The clarity and the colors manage to look nice, but it lacks a crispness or high definition feel that I would expect out of a movie only 6 years old. If anything, the high-definition transfer works against the film as it reveals all of the CG flaws in the action sequences and a good deal of grain in some scenes that feel like pickup shots, put together after initial production on lower quality cameras.
Audio
Presented in English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mixed at 48kHz/24-bit, there are also French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. The TrueHD sound itself manages to outperform the audio as the audio track is clear and helps the sound keep a fair amount of movement despite the typical action movie soundtrack. All of the effects, dialogue and score balance out with one another depending on the scene, even adding to the ridiculousness and humor as it tries to generate an emotional reaction when there’s nothing really necessary. Optional English, English for the hearing impaired, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles are available.
Extras
The set has more special features than I would have expected based on how poorly received the film was, including two audio commentaries, two featurettes and deleted scenes. The first audio commentaries is with director John Woo, who I’ve never heard from on a commentary track and was impressed with how upfront he was about aspects of the movie. In the first few minutes he admits that science fiction directing really isn’t his strong suit, which shows in the movie but gives him more credibility on the commentary. He does a lot of talking about Alfred Hitchcock and praises the actors, calling every actor a younger version of another actor. It’s amusing to see how he sees the actors and the film, but there are some pauses and gaps in the commentary that will keep you interested only if you really need to hear what Woo has to say about every film he’s put together. The next audio commentary is with screenwriter Dean Georgaris is almost the exact opposite as it’s mostly expository about what the different moments of the movie were trying to accomplish. Between praising the naturalness of the dialogue he’s written and explaining why he wrote different parts of the movie or why things are happening. It makes sense to hear him try and explain why he wrote parts of the movie, since it’s pretty terribly written, but the confidence he seems to have gets annoying after a while. “Paycheck: Designing the Future” runs for 18 minutes and 15 seconds. This featurette acts as the making of for the film, surprisingly featuring comments from all the major actors on the set, which makes sense since they haven’t seen the poor reactions to the film yet. Woo talks about how much he loves Affleck, repeating some of his comments from the commentary with some additions from the actors, but otherwise is a fairly generic making of with behind-the-scenes footage and a great deal of talk about casting, writing, production and everything else. “Tempting Fate: The Stunts of Paycheck” runs for 16 minutes and 48 seconds. As the title implies, this featurette covers the stunt production of the film, which is interesting for the first little bit to see how Woo wants his stunts to work and how much input he has on the film. It goes through some of the major scenes, showing storyboards and comparisons with the film itself intercut with interviews from the actors and stunt coordinators. Not a bad featurette, but not something that I was looking forward to after seeing the film. Finally are the extended/deleted scenes, 7 in all, which run 12 minutes and 27 seconds altogether or playable separately as described below: - “Rachel Talks to Sara Rethrick” runs for 47 seconds, Rachel and Sara talk about Michael. - “Leaving in A Limousine” runs for 32 seconds, Michael and Shorty talk in a Limousine. - “Jennings Meets Stevens” runs for 32 seconds, Michel meets another engineer with Rethrick. - “Extracting Rachel’s Memories” runs for 4 minutes and 47 seconds, Rethrick visits Rachel to talk about Michael and their involvement. - “Rethrick Confronts Jennings” runs for 2 minutes and 37 seconds, Rethrick chases down Michael in a nice car and they chat. - “FBI Team Monitors Jennings and Rachel” runs for 1 minute and 8 seconds, the FBI argues about the machine’s potential and what to do about Jennings. - “The Ring” runs for 2 minutes and 3 seconds, this is an alternate ending, Shorty drives Michael and Rachel around in a plant delivery truck, Michael buys back an engagement ring from the pawn shop.
Overall
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