Paycheck

Michael Jennings is a genius who's hired – and paid handsomely – by high-tech firms to work on highly sensitive projects, after which his short-term memory is erased so he's incapable of breaching security. But at the end of a three-year job, he's told he isn't getting a paycheck and instead receives a mysterious envelope. In it are clues he must piece together to find out why he wasn't paid – and why he's now in hot water.

Paycheck was largely dismissed as a squandered adaptation, with critics arguing that John Woo traded Philip K. Dick's intriguing premise for generic action spectacle. A small minority found it competent and well-paced, but the majority saw it as a disappointing misfire — too shallow to work as science fiction and too rote to satisfy as a thriller.