PAYBACK - STRAIGHT UP

Payback.
Anyone who doesn't know the story, catch up quick;
PAYBACK was written and directed by the guy who wrote the screenplay for L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. It’s based on the novel THE HUNTER, which was also adapted into the stone classic POINT BLANK starring Lee Marvin.
The novel, the first by Richard Stark (alias for Donald Westlake), was the first appearance of the career criminal Parker. The story told from the point of view of the ‘bad guy’.

Brian Helgeland, the writer/director, set out to make a film that paid homage to a
different era of crime film. POINT BLANK and THE FRENCH CONNECTION. The hero is a bastard who kills in cold blood, and there was violence to women and unarmed men. Because the world is violent to women and unarmed men. There was a dog in it, that wasn't going to survive to the films final reel.

Mel Gibson baulked, the studio baulked. When they set out to fund a dark and violent crime film, they had actually hoped it would turn out to be Sesame Street. It was decided, perhaps correctly, that the public was not ready for that version of Mel Gibson. They’d had a decade of seeing him in palatable action adventures, of being the loveable rogue. There was also the feeling that cinema should reflect its time, and you couldn’t release a 70’s crime film in the late 90’s. I don’t agree, but I wasn’t the demographic the studio was chasing.

The director was removed, a voice over was tacked on, the film was re-cut and a brand new final act was written and filmed. This final act included such bullshit Hollywood ideas as an 'ending'.

The released version was not awful. It was fun, and slight, with a dark edge that still troubled the popcorn crowd. Mel was the loveable rogue with a touch of darkness, and the film was peppered with some daft humor.
Thanks to the re-cut, it has a beginning, middle and an ending. And it was all in the right order.

The directors’ cut is on DVD now. Credit must go to the suits, and Gibson, for letting this happen, and for participating in the documentary that comes with it.
Because the avid tapes no longer existed, the film got even more old school; it was re-edited from the original film prints. Yes, from film. That crazy substance that most filmmakers wouldn't even know to look at anymore, let alone edit with.
The film has no real beginning, no real ending. Lots of middle.

It starts, brilliantly, with Gibson’s PORTER walking into the city across a bridge. Nothing to his name, we see him stealing money from a blind man (in the ‘Gibson cut’ the blind man was only pretending to be blind, here he is the real deal). He steals a wallet, gets some clothes and a meal, and starts his revenge spree.
Pretty soon, we see him beating the shit out of his wife. It’s a brutal scene, it will make you flinch. What’s great is that there is no attempt to stop the film and explain at this point, to show any context or to justify the scene. It just is. Later on, through flashback, we do see why he’s doing it. And on the documentary, both of the actors involved (Gibson and Deborah Unger) talk about it in good detail.

-Gibson; “If he didn’t care about her, he wouldn’t have visited.’
-Unger; "She deserved the beating."

If you like your films politically correct, if you like your art to represent some nice make believe world, you wont like this film. If you accept that scenes like this do happen, every day, you’ll get it.

His wife and his best friend stole seventy grand off him and left him for dead, full of bullets. He wants his money back.
Now, funnily enough, the money wasn’t really his to begin with. But that is beside the point. When he finds out that the mob now has the money? Well, he’ll just have to take on the mob and ask for it back. Nicely, of course.

One nice exchange;
-“What is this, some kind of principle?”
-“No, I just want my money back”

A dog gets killed. Lots of people die with little warning and no romance. Violence is shown for what it is. When people complain about these films, complain that they glorify violence and crime, they’ve clearly never watched them. These are the most responsible films; they show that violence and crime happen. They show that neither are pretty. They give both of them consequences.

Porter’s moral code in the new cut is far more believable than any attempt to sanitize the character. He beats the crap out of his wife for crossing him, but kills an unarmed man for insulting a woman.

The final third of the film, one of the many things the studio refused to accept a decade ago, is wonderful. A lot happens, and nothing happens, all at once. There is a showdown, yet its over in a flash, with no heroism.
The film ends in a deliberate nod to the opening.
Just as we came into the story partway through, we leave before the end.

The film will never get the recognition it deserves. Partly because it’s got Mel Gibson in it, partly because we’ll always think of the studio version first. If this film had been release in this form, and with a different actor, it would be hailed as a modern classic.

As it is, I love it, and I think one or two others may, too.