Paycheck Blu-ray Disc (John Woo, 2003)

Paramount (USA)
2.35:1 1080p
118 minutes
Audio: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English, DD 5.1 French, DD 5.1 Spanish
Subtitles: Optional English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Extras: audio commentaries; Paycheck: Designing the Future; Tempting Fate: The Stunts of Paycheck; Extended/Deleted Scenes

Released: 19 May 2009

John Woo was essentially de-fanged when he came to work in America. His Hollywood efforts feature some of his iconography and style, but they don’t cover the same themes as his Hong Kong crime dramas. Tellingly, Woo’s most critically and artistically successful American movie, Face/Off, is the one that most-resembles A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard-Boiled.

Woo has admitted that he doesn’t like science fiction. Paycheck’s premise is obviously so far outside of Woo’s caring that you can sense that he was marking time until his next project. In Paycheck, Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) builds a machine that allows a person to see the future. However, once a person sees the future, he can change it. Sound familiar? Yep, the same premise was used for Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, which was released a year ahead of this movie. In fact, Paycheck plays like a remake of Minority Report, right down to the software and hardware that the main character uses.

Paycheck is a lackluster effort. Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman have little chemistry, and Aaron Eckhart had yet to convince me that he is a good actor. (Surprisingly, he was the best performer in The Dark Knight.) Since there is so little ingenuity and so much ordinariness, Paycheck never achieves any momentum or visceral excitement despite the presence of Woo’s constantly moving camera and a motorcycle chase that goes against the flow of traffic. This one’s a bust.

Video:
As with the DVD transfer, the 2.35:1 1080p image seems to have been handled carelessly. Though exhibiting a fairly high level of detail and sharpness, the picture has several instances of print damage. The vibrant color palette (more varied than usual for Woo) is served well by Blu-ray’s high resolution.

Audio:
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English track is pretty active and features plenty of low-frequency effects, though Paycheck is more of a drama than an action movie. Therefore, the mix isn’t as aggressive as one might expect of a Woo project. The sound design isn’t particularly artful, either--everything is done professionally and competently, but everything also feels uninspired and a tad derivative.

Extras:
There’s an audio commentary by John Woo. Woo is fairly engaging, but I felt bad listening to him talk about how great the shoot was because I know that he doesn’t give a crap about science fiction. There’s also an audio commentary by screenwriter Dean Georgaris.

“Paycheck: Designing the Future” is a featurette that focuses on the production’s look. “Tempting Fate: The Stunts of Paycheck” is a featurette that shows how some of the action set-pieces were created. Finally, there are seven extended/deleted scenes.