In the name of a data heist, “The Pay Day” gives us a most boring plot that makes us feel like an uncomfortable dimwit. The ending is absurd, ludicrous, or weird [take your pick], and the use of clumsy dialogue and nonsensical incidents makes the film irritating to watch. It feels empty because what was supposed to be addressed isn’t addressed, and the secondary events go round and round in circles until suddenly; they come to an end. Here’s more on “The Pay Day.”
Spoilers Ahead
Plot Synopsis: What Happens In ‘The Pay Day’?
Jennifer has just been sacked by her boss and is in desperate need of a job as she has to take care of her mother and pay the rent. One day, she gets an anonymous call that brings her to an old guy named Gates, who offers her $5 million for stealing confidential data that will uncover the black money of numerous MPs in the British Government. Considering that she is a data expert, she is a perfect pick for such a job. She is in the middle of the job when she encounters George, who, as it turns out, is also there for the data and is a former employee of Gates. Will Jennifer and George share a common goal to find their way out of the building without anyone noticing and thus raising the alarm? That’s what “The Pay Day” is all about… somewhat.
Rules Of Life
The film points at a very prominent issue, i.e., jobs, without addressing it, and thus it becomes nothing more than a stunt to add to the film’s pseudo-gravity. At the very beginning of the film, Jennifer’s boss states that working twice as hard to be half as good never stopped her from reaching where she has. In this way, she nullifies Jennifer’s impending explanation, which is the underlying irony that the world is facing right now. Later on, we see Jennifer telling George what she couldn’t tell her boss in response to George calling her an opportunist. Is it wrong if someone asks for a cash injection or a bonus for a person who has done his or her work the way he or she is supposed to in the right way? Is it too much to want to be able to pay off student debt, to not work twice as hard only to get half in return, to be able to afford a place in the very city where they were born? These questions are valid, but the world doesn’t run on people who do good. It runs on people who do what’s necessary, and this sometimes involves pushing our luck and taking the unconventional path, bending the rules, or even going outside the rules. This is what George tells Jennifer. He gives his mother’s example of how she used to cheat and win while playing blackjack with him as a kid. So for him, they aren’t doing anything wrong by stealing the data, which in a way, is cheating. But going against the rules doesn’t have to be cheating. Maybe the culprits deserve justice, but what Jennifer and George are doing isn’t right. If they had handed the data to the media, things could have been different. But they decide to use it for their personal means. So, frankly speaking, their words and actions do not tally with each other. Jennifer speaks of getting what she deserves for working more than she needs to, and George mentions winning is possible only when one doesn’t follow the rules. Whether they are correct and whether what they are doing is right are both subject to debate. If we look at it from a macro level, they seem to be doing the right thing (if we disregard the fact that they will be using the data to make money). If we look at it from a micro level, they are trespassing and stealing, which is wrong. The film leaves all this behind and moves ahead to explore a clichéd spark between Jennifer and George.
‘The Pay Day’ Ending Explained: Does Jennifer Get Her Hands On The Data?
George was a cop who, too, was sacked after he lost (or seemed to have lost) a vital pen drive. He was undercover for almost 3 years, and his last mission seemed to be focused on reacquiring the data, which he failed to do. On the other hand, Jennifer returns home empty-handed. To fool Gates’ henchman, she had put the red pen drive (that had the data) in George’s pocket, lying to the guy that it was the fake one. In reality, the blue pen drive that the henchman had was the fake one. So when he escapes after striking Jennifer unconscious, he escapes with the fake one. However, she thinks that the pen drive is gone as she finds George’s pocket empty in the bathroom. It is only towards the end of the film that she, as well as we, find out that George had stashed it in the bathroom when they were changing, and it was later collected by the receptionist who was working with George. We do not find out what they do with the pen drive, but just that they get a lot of money. Jennifer buys the majority of the shares of the company from which she was sacked and sacks her boss. She and George then go to Geneva, Switzerland, for two weeks. There, George denies Jennifer’s offer to be her plus one at her best friend’s wedding, only to surprise her at the event.
“The Pay Day” is a haphazard drama that is stuck between a heist and a romance. Neither one of these aspects is properly addressed and the film ends up becoming boring. The conversations between Jennifer and George are over-the-top clichés, and their chemistry appears forced. What perhaps could have been effective is if we had found out what they did with the pen drive and a little bit more of Gates, who, by the way, is a caricature of a villain (be it intentional or not)—enunciating every word, weirdly describing his tastes, and using leverage. None of these have any effect on us, as he is completely bland. As a matter of fact, Jennifer and George would have also been bland had it not been for their repetitive exchange of words that is outright cheesy and cringeworthy, be it due to the way they say it or some other reason we do not want to know. After all, reason and logic are things that are missing from the plot.