This film is based on a Philip K. Dick story, so you know that it deals with messed-up memories. Not to be too meta, I’d seen this film before–whether I’d rented it from the video store or recorded it on a DVR and watched it, I am not sure–I do know (or do I?) that it’s not in my current watched video library which I am getting familiar with as I am now actually dusting it semi-weekly instead of once every six months unless the DVD is behind others, as the video library at Nogglestead is also doublestacked (or because someone did not want me to see the film again). So I picked it up in February and watched it in late March.
And, gentle reader, in keeping with the spirit of it, I had forgotten the plot of the movie. Or had it been erased from my memory, by whom, and why?
At any rate, I will post it here so that I do not forget again as long as they let me keep this site active. Ben Affleck plays an engineer, Jennings, who does work for high tech firms under strict non-disclosure agreements which involve having his memory wiped for the period of the contract. He can only work eight weeks at a time, and as his friend Shorty (Paul Giamatti) wipes his mind after his latest job, Shorty notes that it’s getting harder to do and that it’s getting risky. But a long-time acquaintance and billionaire offers Jennings a job that will make him millions but will last two years. So he agrees, and only moments seem to pass for Jennings, but he’s done what they’ve asked, and he’s released from the secure facility. He checks the value of his stock options, which have grown to a value of $90 million dollars. When he goes to cash out, though, he finds that he himself had only a couple of weeks before surrendered his options and apparently replaced the personal belongings he brought with him to the facility with seemingly innocuous items.
So he has to figure out what’s going on. Clearly, a conspiracy of sorts, as he is hunted by Federal law enforcement for treason and by others who want him dead.
I won’t spoil it for you, gentle reader who is likely me in a decade or so when I have forgotten the details of the film. It’s a pretty good bit of paranoid fiction. Ben Affleck is not Harrison Ford or Arnold Schwarzenneggar, but he does a good job here. The film also features Uma Thurman as the love interest, so clearly I am on an Uma Thurman kick (having also recently watched My Super Ex-Girlfriend). But, as with that previous post, I am not posting pictures of Ms. Thurman, insisting instead that you refer to Kim du Toit’s post which is fading into the history of the Internet already.
