John Woo is a hack: the Paycheck Review

John Woo. Where to start? though I don't think I've ever seen a good film that he has directed, but I have been assured that they do exist. [concession: Broken Arrow was ok]

Needless to say, Paycheck, much like Mission Impossible 2, Windtalkers and FaceOff, is pretty awful.

Spoilers herein:

Much like those movies previously mentioned movies, nothing in the science or the logic of Paycheck makes sense to anyone with the most passive of intellectual functions. Nothing about Chemicals erasing memory to a certain marker, and "seeing around the curve of the universe" makes any kind of coherent or plausible scifi material. I'm sure it did in the original Philip K. **** Novel that this movie butchers, but not here.

Ass Benfleck, or Ben Assfleck or whatever his name is once again phones in a forgettable performance as a "Reverse Engineer." From the first sequence of Ben strolling down a long deserted hallway wearing sunglasses and thinking he's coolest thing in the world, you just know that this movie is going to be crap. He can act all smug and secure because he's already knows he's cashing in a cool few mil for this load of a turkey.

He keeps getting worse and worse throughout his career and he should just give up and call himself Eric Roberts already. In Paycheck, He's supposed to be some kind of super genius to do all this, but when he starts using the 20 items ensure his survival, it takes him using four or five before he actually thinks "hey, these are pretty damn handy."

Anyway, he has a love-interest in Uma Thurman, who finds him charming for some reason, despite the fact that he makes a total ass of himself when he first meets her. Other than she likes birds, we are given pretty much no insight into or development into her character. She really doesn't do much either, besides almost get him killed a couple times because he can't remember her and pick up an envelope when he drops it.

When the blatantly stylistic and superfluous slow-motion dove sequence inevitably assaults the viewer, I couldn't think of anything other than "**** you, John Woo."

The dialogue is utterly attrocious, much like that other trainwreck of an Affleck movie: Amtrak, oops, I mean Armageddon.

From the first few frames, we know who the good guys are and who the bad guys will eventually turn out to be. Was anyone in doubt of Aaron Eckhart's inevitable turn towards evil? This movie did surprise me a little, though, because I figured PigVomit (Paul Giamatti, who played PigVomit in the Howard Stern Movie, and will forver be known by that name) was going to be dead 45 minutes in, because any clever, funny sidekick is usually wormbait by the end the second act. Somehow he survives, but just disappears for the last half of the movie. So effectively, he was dead.

And if the machine predicts/causes so many bad things, like nuclear war and whatnot, why the hell are the bad guys so intent on keeping it up and running? They can't spend their millions if Starbucks is a burned out ****hole.

and once again, this movie proves that whenever anyone has the chance to see into or travel into the future, they will always use that power in order to gamble.

Final Review- I really didn't like this movie. It was so bad I thought I walked into the wrong theater and I was waiting for J-Lo to show up onscreen as the lesbian hit man.

[ January 04, 2004, 04:13 AM: Message edited by: Sylus ]

Woo's american films suck wang.

His other stuff kicks ass.

John Woo is a hack

That's comment is unfair. "...as of late".

He's done terribly with Paycheck, and Windtalkers - both excellent stories that could have been successful flicks had they been directed by the right person.

I agree with your review on Paycheck. It certainly doesn't do Philip K. ****'s story justice.

Wintalkers wasn't a movie he should have directed. It ended up a series of bloody and half-assed fight scenes with empty plot points interjected throughout to form a very disappointing movie.

John Woo is by no means Spielberg. He is an action director who's expertise is in making spectacular fight scenes.

I'm sorry you didn't enjoy Face/Off. If you had watched the movie with a sense of humour (and gotten past the daftness of two people physically changing faces) I think you may have enjoyed it a lot more. I thought it was an incredibly enjoyable action movie that worked out very well. Face/Off is a good example of typical John Woo movies.

I strongly urge you to watch some of his 25 Hong Kong action movies. Hard Boiled, starring Chow Yun Fat, is possibly the greatest action movie of all time. I'm not kidding.

Sylus's review = brilliant, as usual.

Begs the question. How do movies that cause the audience to lose brain function ever make the big sceen? Butfleck is a horrible actor, I agree. Movies that star "no bodies" like Dirty Pretty Things, not even get mentioned. Indepenedent movies is the way to go.

/\
because its what the masses want

Anyway, I don't like John Woo and have yet to see a good film from him. MI2 and Face Off were pretty boring films but i might give FO another chance since most people think its great.

PS. Ang Lee is better

Face/off wasn't all that bad, it just wasn't all that good either. I never could get past the ludicrous nature of that face switching plot. I guess it did have Dominique Swain in her underwear, though.

MI:2 was absolute garbage. A total bastardization of the original. In the original, they actually had to deal with slightly more realistic things (preventing revelation of covert agents) and had to steal secrets and whatnot. MI:2 was just an excuse to blow the **** out of everything in sight because of that old standby, the supervirus. And once again, Woo uses a face switching technique. No, he excessively over uses a face switching technique. Sir Anthony Hopkins was wasted in that role.

Does anyone here really buy Tom Cruise as an action star anyway? What is he? 5'2" at most, and very non-threatening. In the first film he never even fires a weapon, yet in number 2 he can kill seven guys chasing him in trucks simoultaneously while aiming through his rearview mirror and popping a spinning wheelie on his motorcycle. Please.

Woo is good when he sticks to movies that he's qualified to make. Any movie with cops is good. Any movie where there's a lot of sci-fi makes his movies bad. Broken Arrow was good because it only involved a bomb. He didn't need all the toys, computer generated effects, and all that jazz to make that movie. He really didn't need it in Faceoff, either.

Hey Woo, here's an idea: Get a good cop, and make him try and stop the bad cop, or bad guy. That is all. He should stick with this plot, and do it over and over and over again.

@Dennis: Hardboiled was great, but there were others that were great as well. People only seem to give props to Hardboiled and The Killer, but his other HK movies were quite good as well.

Originally posted by Abstract:
Woo is good when he sticks to movies that he's qualified to make.

He's only really qualified to make bad action films or at least what Dennis said "spectacular fight scenes" which in itself isn't really great to begin with. To qualify for being a good director he needs to be more diverse or at least more revolutionary in his genre. His Hollywood films don't show that... Which is why I think Sylus labelling him a hack is quite fitting. He seems to be making films that the masses want instead of sticking to what use to make his films good in Honk Kong (whatever that was).

Just leave him be, so what if Windtalkers and Paycheck sucked....Face/Off and Broken Arrow were good movies...and MI:2 was not all that horrible but it wasnt great...maybe Woo is tired of doing the bad cop good cop thing....

Screw all you guys, I thought that movie kicked ass. So what if Woo busted out his MI2 action agian. Does every movie have to be a fu<n>ckin Requiem For A Dream(just using as an example)? Don't get me wrong, I like artsy movies, but you can't rag every action one that comes along. All you guys just need to smoke some opium.

[ January 08, 2004, 12:20 AM: Message edited by: DigitalAssault ]

Originally posted by DigitalAssault:
Screw all you guys, I thought that movie kicked ass. So what if Woo busted out his MI2 action agian. Does every movie have to be a fu<n>ckin Requiem For A Dream(just using as an example)? Don't get me wrong, I like artsy movies, but you can't rag every action one that comes along. All you guys just need to smoke some opium.

Damn right....people just like to rag on films to make themselves feel important...John Woo is a cool directer

Faceoff was one of the best action movies I've ever seen. If you go into that movie expecting something artsy then you have some other problems to deal with.

My purpose is not to feel important. It's to make other people feel stupid, or at the very least to think in order to respond to defend whatever they believe.

If you like to go into a movie and turn off your brain for 90 minutes, go ahead, but if all you are really after when you go to see movies is to sit there, have a good time and not expend any mental effort, then you should probably just stay at home and masturbate. It's cheaper.

[ January 09, 2004, 12:37 AM: Message edited by: Sylus ]

Why do you know Sylus anyway?


Not all films are meant to draw out thoughts some are just for fun and Paycheck and ost of john Woo's films are are even his HK stuff...

So let's stop acting like you're some sort of film expert, cause you're really not, just cause you have been to an arthouse theatre once does not make you an expert....learn to be entertained...god I am sick of so called film experts in this place...

[ January 09, 2004, 10:32 AM: Message edited by: PJYfan ]

How in the crap did this movie get tanked by critics and viewers and that basher [img]graemlins/flame.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/depressed.gif[/img] :mad: [img]graemlins/evil.gif[/img] Sylus [img]graemlins/evil.gif[/img] :mad: [img]graemlins/depressed.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/flame.gif[/img] I loved the story, that really really had me interested. Then there was the action. It wasn't mindless car chase and explosions like Bad Boys 2. There was actual purpose to the action and stunts. Affleck did a kick ass job at everything. I went to the movie twice and enjoyed it both times, so Sylus, just go back to the dark corner you jerk off in.

[ January 09, 2004, 04:57 PM: Message edited by: DigitalAssault ]

Calm down people.

If you really didn't give a sh<biga>it about what I have to say, then you shouldn't bother responding.

Besides, I'm a little tired of people going to see really bad movies and enjoying them purely because of 'splosions. Maybe if people thought things through a little more, the world wouldn't be such a horrible place.

also, if people don't blast a director when he does bad movies, he'll just do the same thing again. Unless he's George Lucas, and then he'll just ruin it despite heavy fan criticism.

and for the record, I jerk off in front of my computer most of the time, not in a dark corner.

[ January 10, 2004, 04:02 AM: Message edited by: Sylus ]

I haven't seen paycheck yet, and I'm not sure if I really want to see it. But Woo was one of the best directors in Hong Kong---he made several pretty good movies back in '90 and '80. His 'classic' movies had some influence on Robert Rodriguez and maybe Quentin Tarantino too. He has a glorious history---it's why Hollywood offered him jobs to do. No one can stay on the top forever; he just dropped.

That's the thing Sylus. I thought this movie, for being a non stop action one, had a very good story. It wasn't mindless like bad boys 2, or other similar ones. I also give a sh<n>it about what you say, or I wouldnt be posting. Also, thank you for the masterbation clarification.

Just saw Paycheck. It was bloody horrible. Not only was the plot unbelievable, but the action (the one thing that could have saved this movie) was also horrible. None of the scenes were exciting whatsoever, although the thought of.....

*spoilers*

......of light bending around the universe to allow them to see into the future was hilarious. [img]graemlins/evil.gif[/img]

I thought that whole light bending around the universe was based on one of Einstein's time travel theorys, if so how was it "hilarious"