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Renegade Reverse Engineering - John Woo Style

Posted by Hemos on from the memento-with-two-pistols dept.

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."

2 of 397 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds Like ... by Honig+the+Apothecary · · Score: 5, Interesting
    after a quick memory wipe, finds trying to piece together the mystery of his past

    This sounds like Memento. Maybe instead of a polaroid and tattoos, they will use a pda or cell phone with acamera for him to remember what happened.Or not.

    Although the Uma aspect is tantalizing. :-)

    Honig
  2. a cursed writer by pgjpgj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    PKD has been dead 21 years, doomed in life to being treated like a hack and in death to having his work mutilated by hacks. Hollywood has a knack for picking up only the most superficial details and missing the creepy paranoid subtleties that make the fiction so memorable. Of the half-dozen efforts to date, only "Screamers" (relatively obscure low-budget effort) and parts of "Blade Runner" are even modest approximations of the works upon which they are based. I have low expectations for "Paycheck": one of his earliest short stories, too long and clumsily plotted compared his masterpieces of the 60's and 70's. I fantasize about what a first-rate director could do with "Martian Time Slip", "Man in the High Castle", or especially "A Scanner Darkly". As long as crap star vehicles with the likes of bozos like Affleck continue to get greenlighted, fantasy it will remain.