Ben Affleck says his relationship with J.Lo has harmed his movie career. Just a thought, Ben, but do you think maybe making cruddy movies has harmed it, too?

Affleck’s latest, “Paycheck,” does not rank with his worst, but it won’t add to his rep, either, since it’s less like a movie than a DVD burned using a file-serving Web site where you can download favorite movie scenes. There’s Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” at the beginning, followed by the entire structure of “Minority Report” (itself a “NXNW” knockoff), bits of TV’s “MacGyver” and chunks of Affleck pal Matt Damon’s memory loss thriller, “The Bourne Identity.”

“Paycheck” is closer to “The Stillborn Identity.” Affleck is the world’s smartest engineer, toiling in a concrete-and-marble lab that looks like a situation room for the Weimar Republic. He has just completed a top-secret project and then had his memory erased so he’ll forget its details. That’s fine with him, except he gets stiffed on his paycheck and begins to suspect the project is going to be used by the evil axis. So, joined by his girlfriend (Uma Thurman, in a role that’s a comedown after she dominated in “Kill Bill: Vol. 1”), he decides to get paid and get even.

“Paycheck” is reasonably entertaining as long as you don’t expect it to make sense. Why are Thurman and Affleck together? We don’t see the formation of their relationship, so my best guess is it’s because they’re both tan-in-a-bottle addicts. Why does director John Woo use split-screen in the opening? Both screens show the same thing, so my best guess is it’s because he thinks it’ll look cool (which is the same reason this film, like all of his work, has slo-mo running, a dove in flight and tons of shattered glass).

All of which goes to show Woo is no Hitchcock. He can craft an arresting image, but he does not know how to structure a scene for suspense or how to tell a story with elegance and precision. He’s all about 10 guns firing off a spray of 100 bullets, when he could be using one perfectly aimed bullet instead.

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PAYCHECK

2 stars

Directed by: John Woo

Starring: Ben Affleck, Aaron Eckhart, Uma Thurman

Rated: PG-13

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(c) 2003, Saint Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.).

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AP-NY-12-24-03 0624EST