Another sad, pale adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story this time featuring a rather bored looking Ben Affleck (or is that an oxymoron?) as Michael Jennings, a reverse-engineer who routinely agrees to have his mind “wiped” to erase any trace of the project he’s just completed. Taking on a three year project for his old friend James Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart as stock villain #32 (the greedy businessman)) will mean wiping more of his memory than has ever been attempted. The big paycheck, a guaranteed eight figures, combined with the chance to get close to biologist Rachel Porter (Uma Thurman once again miscast) spur Jennings into signing three years of his life away.
– – – – – – Spoiler Alert – – – – – –
Jennings’ project, in a future that includes travel by bus as well as standard automobiles and nothing “futuristic” besides the aforementioned mind wipes, is a machine that can “see” the future (ostensibly based on Einstein’s theory that if you can see around a big enough curve you can, in fact, see through time). By sending himself nineteen innocuous items, Jennings is able to change the outcome of certain events which lead to his death as predicted by the machine. Jennings selflessly gives up his $92,000,000+ paycheck because of events “seen” by the machine (principally, the rounding up and detention of the sick and that another country is about to attack the U.S. so we preemptively attack them causing the annihilation of Seattle in a global nuclear strike).
While these are fairly horrific events to contemplate, the movie ignores the basic detail that most movies dealing with any sort of time travel, of which precognition is merely a flavor, must ignore: that mere knowledge of the future automatically changes it. It’s the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in action; by observing an event you inherently change the nature of the event. Who would make the same choices knowing the outcome of those choices?
The audience is expected to believe that Rethrick is the real villain, releasing only the information that will benefit his company but not the outcomes of the decisions made based on that information. In some ways, this is true. What this adaptation conveniently ignores is Jennings’ consistent theft of other people’s work for, after all, a “reverse-engineer” takes things apart to figure out how they work. Jennings’ jobs consist of him dismantling other people’s work to “improve” on it for other companies. Of course, this adaptation also conveniently ignores why such a person would be needed to create a machine from scratch.
It’s particularly frustrating having read Philip K. Dick’s work to see such a pale, pastel version of it on screen. Affleck himself was, clearly, in this only for the paycheck, and for the chance to insert his Boston Red Sox fanboy drooling into one of his movies (press for this movie included the fact that he insisted Jennings’ favorite baseball team, a pivotal fact in proving his relationship with Rachel Porter, be the Red Sox). For this, and for Eckhart’s out-of-the-box dull villain, and for the fact that it is highly unlikely that any FBI Agent (Joe Morton wasted yet again in a supporting role) would know Einstein’s theories, I’m giving this 2 out of 5.
Visit the official site