Renegade Reverse Engineering - John Woo Style

MankyD writes "Just saw the trailer to a new John Woo film over at apple.com called PayCheck. Written by Phillip K Dick of Blade Runner and Minority Report, its a story about a top notch reverse engineer (Ben Affleck) who, after a quick memory wipe, finds trying to piece together the mystery of his past. It's also got Uma Thurman as the female lead. Unfortunately the website isn't up and running yet, and the premise of the movie seems a little far fetched, but this still ought to be a fun one."

Comments

Re:Chasing Amy was top of his game?

[critter_hunter]

Uh, the Big Hit isn't a Woo movie. He's one of the 10 or so producers, not exactly what I'd call involved in the (pseudo) artistic process.

John Woo didn't do anything good since he made it to Hollywood. I thought Broken Arrow was nice when I was 12, Face|Off had some cool gunfights, and MI2 had a few nice action scene, but overall they were all terrible.

Not that anything John Woo made back in HK was all that great, but it was still much better than the tripe he's spweing these days. Actually, I can't think of a single Chinese actor who has been doing better in the US than in HK. Although, if Jet Li stopped making movies with lame rappers he'd be faring quite good - The One was great fun

Anyway, all this to say that John Woo's name isn't as much a turn-off as much as, say, Michael Bay. Ben Affleck, however, is even worse than Keanu Reeves. How can a guy who has been in *Daredevil*, *Reindeer Games* and *Gigli* be allowed to keep making movies. He's like a failure magnet.

Here's how to recognize a good Affleck movie: Matt Damon's in it. From there it's only a small step to give all the credit to Mr Damon.

Oh for the science fiction Alfred Hitchcock...

[nanojath]

Really, Blade Runner pulls a fair number of components from the story and world of Do Androids..., but as another has said, Ridley Scotts main accomplishment is his creation of an environment suffused with futuristic ambiance.

Predictably, what is most absent from both Dick adaptations is the more philosophical edge. In Minority Report in particular the whole issue of the implications of alternate possible futures devolves to a mere plot device.

And sigh, yes, where IS a director consistently interested in the speculative genre? Spielberg seems to have some designs on that mantle, which is a shame since he's such a ham-handed, cliche driven director. Where's our sci-fi Alfred Hitchcock?