Payback

(1999)
I know it's an older film and maybe many of you have seen it, but I never got the chance to take in Mel Gibson's revenge fantasy, Payback, and since Three Kings was out at the DVD rental place, I decided to stay in testosterone alley and take up Mel's invitation to 'root for the bad guy.' Gibson plays Porter, a no-nonsense, take-no-s**t kind of guy who is double-crossed and swindled out of seventy grand. Vowing revenge on principle, mostly (and, okay, the money's a lure), he sets out to try and get his cash back. Initially thought dead (with good reason, you'll see), Porter pisses off increasingly high-ranking members of the "Outfit," which he knows as the "Syndicate" until they force some kind of showdown. Aiding Porter (sort of) in his quixotic quest to get $70K back from the mob (?) is high priced call girl Rosie (Maria Bello), whom Porter had a thing with for a while. Mostly she just patches him up after he is shot, beaten, stabbed, etc., and is there to give him just a little comfort. Opposing him is an array of people, from ex fellow-swindler Val (Gregg Henry) to Val's superior Carter (William Devane, playing it extra cool here) to his partner Fairfax (James Coburn, in the lightest performance in the piece) and the ultimate (for this film) mob (?) boss, Bronson (the inappropriately cast Kris Kristofferson). Oh, and Porter runs across some low-rent thugs who run numbers and a few crooked cops ("Do they come any other way?" he asks in a voice over). There's also a completely unnecessary subplot involving a dominatrix/hooker named Pearl (Lucy Liu) largely added to show some flesh, I guess. Payback is very entertaining in spots and Mel has some great one-liners. Some of the performances are very good in complement to his deadpan delivery (I particularly enjoyed the jittery Arthur Stegman, played to perfection by David Paymer) as well, and there are some clever plot twists (I didn't see the ending coming, though I probably should have). But the movie is unrelentingly violent, even where it didn't have to be. Dialogue scenes are there mostly to give you a breath between the beatings and the shootings and the blood flowing. In the entire film, the only person who isn't violent to another in some way is Rosie, who never really breaks out of the "support chick" role. Even Porter's junkie wife pumps him full of lead. All of this macho stuff plays okay, if you like that, but violence, like everything else, has to escalate, and by the end of the film I was simply tired of seeing people beat the crap out of each other. It's not worth sitting through all the pugilism and gunfire just to see some (admittedly very) clever lines and a few good performances. Another thing that irked me about the film was its overt misogynism. Of the three women in the movie, two were whores and one was a junkie. While Rosie is somewhat sympathetic (in the hooker/heart of gold kind of way), Pearl is nothing more than a fantasy, not having even two dimensions, spouting attitude both on and off the job and modeling all sorts of shiny and revealing clothing. How NOW missed boycotting this film, I'll never know. All in all it's not a terrible film, if you really crave a spot of the ultraviolence. But from Mel Gibson I expect more than blood, bullets, and broads. April 19, 2000