Payback (1999)

Starring - Mel Gibson; Gregg Henry; Maria Bello; Deborah Unger & David Paymer Director - Brian Helgeland MPAA - Rated R for strong violence, language, and drug and sexual content. In the grand scheme of Mel Gibson movies, Payback was better than Conspiracy Theory, but not as good as Braveheart or Lethal Weapon. In other words, it's a decent couple of hours of entertainment, but 20 years from now if they compile a list of Mel Gibson's greatest hits, Payback probably won't be on it. Gibson plays a crook who gets double crossed by his partner after they heist a payroll. Mel's partner needed the money to pay off a mob debt. So he puts a couple of bullets in Mel, leaving him for dead, and goes on to pay off his creditors. But, Mel isn't dead (it would be a real short movie if he was) and he certainly isn't happy. To make matters worse, he wants his money back and is willing to go to any lengths to accomplish this feat. His ex partner has already used it to pay off the mobsters, so Mel goes after the mob to get it back. Payback is often a very violent film. To its credit, there are a few scenes that could have been very graphic, but the director (I'm not sure which one -- more about that in a second) made the choice to let the audience use their imagination instead of subjecting us to the usual gratuitous gore found in many films. The film appears a bit disjointed in places, which is understandable considering producer/star Gibson wasn't thrilled with how the film turned out and wanted parts of it re-shot. When the director refused, another one was brought in to do the re-shoot. So as a result while the final product is apparently better than the original (although personally I would love to see the original version for comparisons sake) it does get a bit of a choppy feel to it towards the end. It's always tough to make a film where the main character is a villain, unless that person has some redeeming qualities. In this case, Gibson's character has few redeeming qualities. But hey, it's Mel, so even when he is killing people in cold blood we are still rooting for him. My guess is that if that you put some other Johnny Bananas actor in this role the audience would not be quite as responsive. Gibson is Gibson, whether he is playing a suicidal cop or a stone cold killer, he does a good job. He almost guarantees that no matter what else happens in the rest of the movie at least the audience is going to get one good performance. This time out Mel is surrounded by a good supporting cast, including Maria Bello (as his love interest), William Devane and Kris Kristofferson (as mod bosses). The man who steals the show and unfortunately doesn't have a real big part is James Coburn (as yet another mobster). If I had one big disappointment in this film, it would be that Coburn didn't have a bigger role. In the end, Payback is a fairly solid action thriller, just not in quite the same league as some of Mel Gibson's other work. 7/10 Reviewed February 5, 1999 by Joe Chamberlain