Review of 'PAYCHECK'

PAYCHECK

MICHAEL JENNINGS is a brilliant computer engineer who works on projects so secret, he has to agree to have his memory erased after he completes them. But hey, hundreds of thousands of dollars are worth losing three months memory, right? Then his employer JAMES RETHRICK, offers him a job that will take three years to complete, but will earn him hundreds of millions of dollars. If he accepts this, he'll never have to undergo the memory wipe again. Three years later, he awakens with no sensation of time having passed, shakes hands with his boss, and goes to the bank to collect his money. But the money is gone; the bank clerk tells him that he transferred it to an unknown destination and had sent himself an envelope with miscellaneous items--sunglasses, cigarette lighter, hairspray, and several other apparently useless artifacts. All this was before his memory was wiped, and there was no explanation as to why.

Michael leaves the bank and tries to understand why he would have given up the money and send himself useless junk in its stead, but his ruminations are interrupted when the FBI arrests him and accuses him of treason. Somehow he starts a fire, and in the smoke and steam from the sprinklers, he is able to escape--thanks to the sunglasses in the envelope which enable him to see through the haze. A pursuit begins with other people shooting at him, but each time, he is able to get away thanks to the items in the envelope. For example, one time he uses the hair spray and the cigarette lighter to rig a crude flamethrower against his pursuers.

Why is all this happening? I'll say only that these convenient escapes are not coincidences, and there is a logical explanation. The plot flaws are big enough to accommodate an eighteen-wheeler truck, and some of them could have been eliminated if the writers had given a damn, but the ending is still logical. Sort of.

Confession: I watched the movie on TV, not while working out.  The acting is reasonable, the characters plausible, and the music nicely exciting. The movie, like Bladerunner, was adapted from a story from the brilliant and psychotic science fiction writer, Philip K Dick. Aaron Eckhart, as usual, does a great job as the bad guy, In spite of the holes in the plot, it's exciting enough to rate ++++ - it will get your pulse up to a run.
If you see it, let me know what you think.