The heist goes smoothly enough. The cash is already hot. So when Porter and Val steal it, they're in the clear. Time comes around to split the take and Val makes three grave mistakes: he takes Porter's cut; he takes Porter's wife and tries to take Porter's life. Problem is, when you kill this guy, you better make sure he's dead. Porter soon resurfaces, reborn with a serious case of tunnel-vision. He wants his cut and doesn't care what he has to do to get it. Now, everyone in the city's criminal underworld, including an air-tight syndicate called The Outfit, have Porter's cross-hairs trained on them.
[Pearl has an appointment with Val in his hotel room]
Oakwood Arms Manager: There's a young lady to see you, sir... her name is Pearl.
Val Resnick: She's got two very bad habits; right now I'm only interested in one of 'em. Send her up.
Mel Gibson's back, and he's grimly determined to wreak revenge, utilizing every bit of firepower and brutality available in this over-the-top 'noir' action thriller that's set in some dank, crumbling, art deco city. Gibson plays a nasty professional thief who was shot in the back left for dead in a garage by a double-crossing partner (Gregg Henry) and deceitful, junkie wife (Deborah Kara Unger) after they successfully heisted $140,000 in cash from Chinese money launderers. But he's alive and determined to pursue his perverse sense of justice, taking on a shadowy, corporate crime syndicate known as The Outfit (Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, William Devane) and aided by an old girl-friend (Maria Bello), a high-priced call-girl. All the women in this movie are sleazy and unsympathetic - but, then again, so are all the macho men. There's lot of fighting, shooting, and endless gratuitous violence - some quite sadistic and graphic, like the industrial pedicure, which involves smashing toes with a sledgehammer, and seeing a person's nose ring ripped out. In fact, the torture, incinerations, slicing and dicing is all there is. Based on the novel, "The Hunter" by Richard Stark, adapted by Brian Helgeland ("L.A. Confidential," "The Postman," "Conspiracy Theory") and Terry Hayes, and directed by Brian Helgeland, it's also a re-make of John Boorman's "Point Blank" (1967) which starred menacing Lee Marvin. And Mel Gibson is no Lee Marvin. Basically, Gibson's miscast, delivering a dull, portentous narration and desperately looking for wit where none exists. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Payback" is a loud, lethal! 4. It's what they call "comic book violence" but it's so choppy, cheesy and crude that no one's laughing.
