Payback
Porter (Mel Gibson) is not a very nice guy, in fact he’s the kind of man that would and does steal from a beggar in the street. So it might come as a surprise to find that he’s the guy your supposed to be rooting for in this film. Even more of a surprise is the fact that by the end you find that you really are rooting for him...
Porter (Mel Gibson) is not a very nice guy, in fact he’s the kind of man that would and does steal from a beggar in the street. So it might come as a surprise to find that he’s the guy your supposed to be rooting for in this film. Even more of a surprise is the fact that by the end you find that you really are rooting for him.
Porter and an associate Val Resnick (Gregg Henry) do a job on a Chinese gang and steel $140,000 dollars from them. Val double crosses Porter and leaves him for dead while he runs off with all the money. Porter survives the incident and goes after Val to get his share of the money. When Porter catches up with Val he learns that Val has pooled all the money into a villainous gang known as the Syndicate.
Porter soon realises that in order to get his money back he’s going to need to go a lot higher than Val and take on the people at the head of the Syndicate. Obviously the Syndicate isn't going to just give money out to whoever asks for it, so Porter has to take some drastic measures to ‘persuade’ them.
This is a very dark but none the less enjoyable film. Everybody in it is a bad guy, from Porter to the Syndicate to the crooked cops. It’s this angle that makes it work and manages to get you rooting for Porter all the way. There are also enough twists and unexpected plot developments to keep it apart from the majority of films in this category.
It’s very unusual to see Mel Gibson in the bad guy role but he plays it well. He’s very cool and laid back whatever the situation but at the same time very sinister and ruthless. Gregg Henry as Val Resnick is also very good, coming across as a sleazy and rather perverted criminal with ‘a thing’ for S&M.
I’ve seen some reviews compare this film to Grosse Pointe Blank. I disagree with this view completely, Pointe Blank takes a much more light-hearted approach to the violence and isn’t nearly as gruesome or ‘in your face’ as Payback. This film has much darker undertones and includes just about every crime including murder, prostitution and drugs.
Picture quality on the disk is very good. It’s a double-sided disk with a 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen print on the one side and 4:3 Pan & Scan on the other. The first thing you notice about the picture is the fact that the colour seems to be heavily toned down. This leads to a much darker picture and some scenes almost look black and white. This does somehow add to the feel of the whole thing.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is also very good. Gunshots whiz around the surround channels and there are plenty of places where the sub channel gets a good pounding. All dialogue is very clear and audible.
Unfortunately this disk is extremely disappointing on the extras side. All you get are some very short interview clips with some of the actors including Mel Gibson, Maria Bello, Lucy Liu and James Coburn.
This is a very enjoyable film, although the very squeamish might find some of the scenes a bit too violent and gruesome. Mel Gibson plays the bad guy anti-hero very well and is helped along by some very good supporting cast. The only trouble I found with the plot was trying to accept that someone would go this far for just $70,000. Apart from that I give it a highly enjoyable 4 out of 5.
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