A Phillip K Dick story with John Woo action scenes. The premise is a fascinating one: The concept of the NDA is taken to the next logical step -- companies requiring employees working with sensitive info to undergo a memory wipe of everything that happened since the beginning of a project.

Overall, a very good movie; the plot hits on a lot of interesting serious points, while also managing a good dose of over-the-top chase scenes and explosions. The romantic interaction between Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman worked for me as well.

If the movie had one flaw, I would say it was in the underdeveloped villian character(s). For the most part, their portrayals were in the flat generic "bad guy" role. A semi-half-hearted attempt near the end in the dialog to patch on a human motivation rang hollow. I would have preferred to learn more about the motivations behind the actions of Aaron Eckhart's character throughout the story.

Still, that's minor, and easy to overlook in a film that manages to be simultaniously fun, thought provoking, and sometimes even touching.

The image of the bewildered Ben Affleck running around clutching his little bag of oddball trinkets as if they were his only remaining remnant to the severed self he forgot, conjures, for me, the proverbial madness of life itself in its most basic form. Usually, we forget that this -- whatever exists now in this moment -- is all that really is. Yet always, we cling to something that yields hope for the future. A pile of stock options, a bank account number, or a half finished crossword puzzle and a bottle of hairspray. Ultimately, what is the difference? It is only in the insane act of grasping the astoundingly illusory nature of the future that we understand the human dilemma.

Cryptic babbling on my part aside, it is the images and ideas which evoke thoughts such as these that really make the movie.