HMMM. When will people realise that Ben Affleck is not big or clever enough to carry a film on his own?

He started well enough with Good Will Hunting and Dogma but the warning signs were there with Armageddon and alarm bells were definitely going off by the time he made The Sum of All Fears.

So it should come as no surprise that Paycheck is not only a weak, run-of-the-mill movie but that it is not lifted in any way by the presence of Mr Affleck.

Which is a shame because director John Woo has a decent record and it is based on a Philip K Dick short story, as was the far superior Minority Report.

Indeed, the similarities between the two are striking. It's a futuristic look at how science can be used for good - or ultimately evil.

It's a tale of one man's struggle to unravel the mystery of his sudden downfall.

And there's the moral of the story that, if left to run amok, mankind will become a victim of its own scientific making.

Minority Report was original, pacy and filled with suspense and it had Tom Cruise. This is plodding, predictable and has all the suspense of a tin of beans.

Uma Thurman shines, albeit too briefly, as the love interest. But Aaron Eckhart is neither menacing nor memorable enough to be a convincing villain.

The action sequences are well done, as you would expect from Woo, but the ending descends into clich-ridden nonsense.