The ideational source of the story is a variation of Minority Report (Dir: Steven Spielberg) in which Captain Anderton (Tom Cruise) relies on the futurists and 3-D visual technology to foresee the future. Here in Paycheck, Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) uses a similar technology to preview his future and pre-sends himself 20 life-saving items to escape from fatality. In fact, both Minority Report and Paycheck are from the same author.

John Woo deliberately gets rid of his usual style of using slow-motion and bringing Mackintoshes into mis-en-sene. He adopts many familiar visual techniques (split screen, wipe out, swish pan) in the film but fails to fully exploit the vacuum in the restricted narrative, nor does he master to create surprises in it. He could have used more cross-editing to intermingle the plots in intensifying the suspension. In brief, Woo fails to get the horns after catching the deer, which disappoints many viewers. Nevertheless, the theme that seeing ones future deters oneself from being progressive is perhaps the best element in the film.