{"id":30900,"date":"2023-04-05T10:54:17","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T15:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=30900"},"modified":"2023-04-03T18:54:44","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T23:54:44","slug":"movie-report-paycheck-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/05\/movie-report-paycheck-2003\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Report: <i>Paycheck<\/i> (2003)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/paycheck.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">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&#8217;d seen this film before&#8211;whether I&#8217;d rented it from the video store or recorded it on a DVR and watched it, I am not sure&#8211;I do know (<em>or do I?<\/em>) that it&#8217;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 <em>because someone did not want me to see the film again<\/em>).  So I picked it up <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/04\/good-uh-dvd-hunting-saturday-february-25-2023-relics-antique-mall-i-have-this-gift-card\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">in February<\/a> and watched it in late March.<\/p>\n<p>And, gentle reader, in keeping with the spirit of it, <em>I had forgotten the plot of the movie<\/em>.  Or had it been erased from my memory, <em>by whom<\/em>, and <em>why<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, I will post it here so that I do not forget again <em>as long as <u>they<\/u> let me keep this site active<\/em>.  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&#8217;s getting harder to do and that it&#8217;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&#8217;s done what they&#8217;ve asked, and he&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>So he has to figure out what&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;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&#8217;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 <em><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/27\/movie-report-my-super-ex-girlfriend-2006\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">My Super Ex-Girlfriend<\/a><\/em>).  But, as with that previous post, I am not posting pictures of Ms. Thurman, insisting instead that you refer to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kimdutoit.com\/2023\/02\/27\/more-double-trouble\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">Kim du Toit&#8217;s post<\/a> which is fading into the history of the Internet already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;d seen this film before&#8211;whether I&#8217;d rented it from the video store or recorded it on a DVR and watched it, I am not sure&#8211;I do know (or do I?) that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30901,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30900\/revisions\/30901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}