I meant his direction of the non-action scenes. They were well-handled in a stylish but subtle way.

I agree that the action scenes definitely did not have the flair of his previous work.

I'm pretty sure the bird was a joke. ie, Woo having some fun with the expectations of his movies.

Decent concept for a movie, poorly executed.

I couldn't help but laugh at how they conveniently had plenty of dry ice machines around for all the action scenes in the lab.

"Well made" is subjective here, in the scene where Afflick runs out of the room and socks the guy in the throat with his forearm sending him onto the floor was ten times better edited in the trailer, than what is seen in the theatrical cut. On screen the scene is altered in that it is darker, and edited faster, essentially destroying the flow and intensity of the attack.

"A-Level Hollywood movie" and "medium ground" don't mix. Woo's action in this movie is tepid, repetitive, and grating. Sans one amazing camera shot, there was nothing in this movie that made me excited or elevated a response, and in a John Woo movie this is expected and for me it was a complete let-down.

I thought this was a fun movie. It had a little of everything in it. Definitely worth the price of admission.

I thought it was passable for a popcorn matinee, but can Woo not make one film without the crossed guns and dove imagery? I mean, they were fine the first few times, but now it's just shoehorned in and plays more like an in-joke than a director's trademark.

Question... How come people who criticize this film also claim they enjoyed "Minority Report"?

Speaking for myself, I've been delving into science-fiction (from Clarke, van Vogt and P.K. Dick to Strugatsky, Klein and Brussolo) for 20 years now; I've read thousands of books and must've watched hundreds of genre movies. Yet, I believe that "Minority Report" was a worse movie than this one.

I believe sincerely that "Paycheck" was more engaging and was less pretentious than Spielberg's lackluster drivel. If I can get it on DVD at a low cost (ex-rental or something), I will add it to my collection.

Saw this last night (along with 9 other people in the theater), and I thought it was pretty good. Once was fine for me and I won't be watching again, but it was alright.

But one thing I did find funny, is that I forgot that Woo directed this movie, until the scene where the dove flies through the door then I was quickly reminded who was behind the camera.

Classic Woo.

Bump for the DVD release.... Boy, I was disappointed in this one. Knew it got bad reviews but was hoping it'd be decent. Started out well but jumped the shark about halfway through (the exact moment I can pinpoint was during the godawful motorcycle chase scene). I don't know what's happened to Woo, Face/Off and about 1/2 of MI2 were his last decent works IMHO. This felt like someone trying to parody Woo.

I mean,

I rented this a few days ago, and the wife and I watched it last night for the first time.

I have ready this entire thread, and agree on some plot holes, but still disagree on all the blatantly negative remarks.

For a "popcorn" flick, I thought it was a good film. I went in blind (didn't know anything about it beforehand), and thoroughly enjoyed it.

My only complaint is the lack of real chemistry between Thurman and Affleck. I just don't see them as a couple. I like Affleck, and I respect Thurman as an actress (but I am not on the Uma bandwagon created by KB and PF fans), but I just didn't see the chemistry.

Other then that, as said earlier, the bad guy is easily well played by the In the Company of Men star, and Affleck does the best he could with what he had to work with.

Not a fan or a hater of Woo (don't think I've seen any of his other films, but I could be wrong), but as I said earlier, for a popcorn flick, this was just fine.

I will pick this up in the trade forum eventually.

I just finished watching it and I didn't think it was that bad either. I liked the cast, even though I will agree w/ LVM that Ben and Uma could have had better chemistry. Overall, it was a good movie - Woo has done better, but he has done much worse.

I was severly disapointed with this movie. it started out decently enough, and was fairly interesting until the motorcylce chase. Then the movie just fell apart and became a really stupid action movie. And not even a good one...boring action scenes really in that boring lab. And quite frankly listening to the DVD...John Woo is to blame for that. I think he did well with the set-up, though Uma Thurman was terribly wasted in a truly lame role. Not to mention the sappy ending. And the dove. Maybe Woo did it as a joke, but I surely wasn't laughing WITH the movie at that point.

And did anyone else watch this movie and think...gee, this Ben guy is ok, but why isn't Uma just kicking everyone's ass for him?

Almost, not quite.

What I was actually thinking while watching it was "If it wasn't for Tarantino, this chick would be starring in the made for TV movie "The Truth about Cats and Dogs Part II"

enjoyable. worth buying IMO.

How did they know/think he was supposed to die at precisely 3:03 pm

It wasn't bad. I enjoyed it, but found it pretty forgettable.

I rented this over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised.

Nothing great, or anything I'd want to own. But it was a fairly entertaining, mindless popcorn flick.

It was better than I expected.

The thing that bugged me most about this movie and movies like it is how the guys with the guns come off as though they've never used a firearm before. They shoot and shoot and come so close but never manage to even graze their targets, even when those targets are standing still! How many bullets were fired? I mean, come on!

Welcome to just about every action movie ever made

Can't see Eckhart as a bad guy did you see the company of men

I don't get it, why not just fire less bullets at the heroes? Is it believed that them being shot at makes it more exciting? What about the scene at the end where they dodged the bullet even though they didn't move until after it had been released from the gun? Maybe if they had jumped right before the shot…

Roger Ebert comes to mind. I never went out of my way to see this movie and a big part of why is because he and Roeper really gave it a bad review. Finally caught it on cable and thought it was pretty good with the worse scene being the white doves. Might as well have just interrupted the movie/story and put up a sign that said "This picture brought to you by John Woo".

I found it funny how much Ebert loves, loves, loves Minority Report where without any logic at all the Tom Cruise characters security level is still left at "access everything" even long after he is on the run and even after he is caught, sentenced and put away. For Ebert to then say in his review of Paycheck "And the attempts of the Allcom security staff to deal with the various locks and alarms in their top-secret lab had me thinking of "Dumb and Dumber." is just a joke.