By SUSAN LULGJURAJ

With all the dramas that come out on Christmas hoping for that Oscar nod, “Paycheck” could be the perfect movie to get a way from the all the thought-provoking, insightfulness that goes on with the movies during this time of year.

Alas, it could have been.

“Paycheck” is a vehicle for Ben Affleck and while this wasn’t a downgrade from “Gigli” or “Daredevil” it certainly doesn’t put Affleck back on the radar as the star that is going to draw the young females screaming as he once did.

He plays Michael Jennings, an engineer that allows companies to use his intelligence to work backwards from other inventions so that he can make it better and make lots of money for the corporations. The only catch is he allows these companies to erase his memory so that he can’t remember what he worked on and how he made the new product. His memories have become simply “highlights of his life.”

He gets put on a project that is much longer than anything he ever experienced. Three years of his life he allows to be erased and when he leaves the company much to his surprise he sees that he gave up $90 million dollars in exchange for an envelope that has only 19 items enclosed. Of course, he has no idea why because his memory from the past three years has been swiped and the only thing he discovers is that 19 items are extremely crucial to his livelihood.

Affleck looked better in this movie as an action hero then he did in “Daredevil” but there is still something missing. Of course through J. Lo’s workout regime for him he has bulked up somewhat, but even that can hardly lead you to believe that an engineer knows how to fight against trained specialist protecting a secret worth billions of dollars, but also an engineer who won’t shoot a gun to protect himself.

Uma Thurman plays the love interest as she has done in the past, only problem is the script Thurman is given is awful. Her fixation with a wrench should be on the Home & Garden Network rather than in this movie. This movie is also a letdown for her after she provocatively dismantled everything in her path in “Kill Bill: Vol 1.”

It reminded me a lot of “Minority Report” and for good reason. Both movies were adaptations of Philip K. Dick short stories, the latter being the better movie by far of the two, which only goes to show Affleck is definitely no Tom Cruise.