John Woos New Film "Paycheck" Based on a Philip K. Dick-novel
The hype "Paycheck" is coarse: The Second Coming of Philip K. Dick titled about wired and draws attention to the submission of the film. To "Blade Runner" (1982), "Totally recall" (1990), "Screamers" (1996), "Impostor" (2002) and "Minority Report" (2002), So now the sixth cinema evaluation of a novel of the Sci-Fi cult ass, which promises a very special treat: Finally, John Woo did directed, one "Master of visual art", How Ben Affleck, the main actor of the film, refers to Schwarmerisch.
In "Paycheck" to Ben Affleck’s side: uma thurmann. Image: Paramount Pictures
The place of action for the adaptation of the story written in the 1950s is Seattle. the "Space Needle", The landmark of the North American city, is the only recognizable feature, otherwise the locations look pretty interchangeable (turned in Vancouver): Modern Hochhauser, U-Betriebschaft, superfilled traffic straws, etc. All precise photographed, in bright, kuhl-luminous colors. Although Futuristic machines are primarily the prominent markers of the future (handguns, natural and climate foreignrogates, 3-D avatars and last but not least the pivot and pivot of the film: the Fortune Telling Apparatus), this usual-everyday is falling into Weight, which found Woo in the present and staged with its special handwriting. On the representation, it seems, Woo seems to tell us here. On light modifications of the existing one to make the realitat appear in another light.
"He changed something" is the first sentence that brings the viewer to the track of a case, which the Rhetrik Group keeps secret at any price and the FBI, "of national security" talking and working under high prere, clarify. The key figure is the computer specialist Jennings (Ben Afflek), who has developed a mysterious wonder weapon for Rhetrik, but can not remember anything because he has been lit his thought after the order. Only a few useless objects remain with him: a munze, a clock, string, etc., To pull his head out of the sling, which seem to pull the FBI and Rhetrik narrower with each elongating minute. When Jennings starts the race against time, apparently cheerful sky from a hobbyist is a super agent. Even his former colleagues can only shake his head. But a movie historical quote from WOO helps on the sponge.
Jennings Look became Cary Grants clothing in Alfred Hitchcocks "North by Northwest" (1959) modeled. Grant plays the Schnoden Werber Thornhill, who one day is confused with George Kaplan. Since the latter is a agent of the US intelligence services, which exists only on the paper and in the presentation of the counterparties, Thornhill initially ames the role of Kaplan veryly to save his skin – a comparable role exchange takes place later at Michelangelo Antonioni in "The reporter" (1973) and makes a journalist (Jack Nicholson) to a weapon handler.
The identity change that makes Jennings best describe as reality hopping: when he gradually begins to recognize the meaning of the supposedly meaningless objects, for Jennings, one of John Woo rapidly stalled in scene between the past, present, presence and future, in the course of which turns out that Jennings fulfills an already prescribed role here. Comparable is this reality hopping with Dean Parisot "Galaxy Quest" (1999), in which aged stars of a Sci-Fi series become suddenly universal wares because a civilization of another solar system had taken the series for Bare Munze, while fans who had scientifically worked up the plot in Yps manner, the actresses save in your life-time mission in all radio contact.
This burr migration, which will be home to the figures in several worlds at the same time, equips them with something that could be called Omni visibility. A visual quality that Jennings shares over wide parts of the film with you and some other figures of film history. About the protagonists of "VideoDrome" (1982), "Nick of Time" (1995) and "Sixth Sense" (1999), which undergo a neutralization process towards the non-identity in the course of the film production between the levels.
All these are motifs with which the contemporary cinema, on the threshold of Cyberspace, thinks about himself (cf. Arnie and his double). Motifs have already been introduced in their cinematic self-reflexivitat earlier in woos. With "Paycheck" Bully bullying the director born in China to the cinematic identity disks of its success films (such as "Face / off" and mission impossible 2).
These films had the border with mainstream-kitsch might already have crossed a bit too far. But they can also be found in a tradition of the Hollywood cinema, which are formally addressed the merger of the old medium film with digital media-based entertainment formats. For example, this is the non-identity of the protagonist borrowed to the computer game in "Paycheck" inscribed between the pictures. Woos film was probably a bit more than another Philip K. Dick filming with big choreographed action be.