PAYCHECK, DIRECTOR: JOHN WOO

Watching Paycheck made me want to give up reviewing films altogether. This inept, silly and annoying movie should have never left the pre-production stage.

It features career-low performances from blandly handsome Ben Affleck, toothsome and vapid Uma Thurman and John Woo, who should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

Paycheck sees his soul, brought, signed, sealed and delivered to Hollywood and his sellout mentality is now well and truly complete.

If you thought Gigli was bad, Paycheck is just as awful, if not worse.

It's a rip-off of Minority Report and Total Recall, even though Phillp K. Dick loosely bases it on an original short story.

Affleck plays Michael Jennings, a "reverse-engineer" who steals other people's technology, sells it to the highest bidder and then, conveniently, has his memory erased.

He's approached by an old friend, Jimmy Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart) to committ himself to a three-year project , which, if completed, will secure the biggest payout of his career.

But Jenning's colleague Shorty (Paul Giamatti) has reservations about this job, citing the old adage that, if it's too good to be true, it probably is- as Jennings discovers to his cost.

Jennings wakes up to fins that it's three years into the future and his only help in piecing together what has happened is in an envelope filled with a wristwatch, a diamond ring and a matchbox.

In all this confusion, time is running out for him to find out what happened. Making matters worse, people are trying to find and kill him.

With a script that either states the obvious at every turn or repeats things such as character motivation long after the audience has established it for themselves. Paycheck is an essay in stupidity.

With more holes than Swiss cheese, its artless and graceless action sequences are poor payoff for a plot that is either very silly or needlessly complicated.

Affleck has never been more wooden or more smug. Thurman, as a biologist must be the most airheaded and vacuous doctor that I have seen on film.

Woo manages to make the action set-pieces incredibly conventional and very unexciting. His reputation, gained from Hong Kong action flicks, has been lifelessly drained away and he's been forced to cover up a feeble plot, rubbish acting and script that does nothing but slither along.

Paycheck is a desperate effort by all concerned and should be avoided by audiences like the plague.