THE AISLE SEAT - "PAYBACK"
by Mike McGranaghan
Movie violence is not one of my favorite things. I think acts of violence need to serve some kind of function in a story to be acceptable. They have to be part of a larger picture, a way of making the audience feel the gravity of a situation. So many films lose me because they use bloodshed as a device to stimulate or excite the audience. And, perhaps most importantly, violence shouldn't be treated lightly. Sure, action movies can be fun, but if you stop to think about them long enough, most of them are frightening. The violence is too casual, too removed from the point of the plot. My reaction, then, to Payback was mixed. On one level, I admired the film as a pulpy crime drama with lots of twists. On another, I was disturbed by the relaxed attitude towards brutality. Payback is technically a good film, but it's too incessantly violent to be much fun.
A loose remake of an old Lee Marvin picture called Point Blank, Payback stars Mel Gibson as Porter, a small-time criminal who hijacks some laundered money from a group of Chinese mobsters. He does so as a favor to his friend Val (Gregg Henry), with the idea that they will split the money 50/50. Val owes $130,000 to an organized crime syndicate; he and Porter make the heist and wind up with $10,000 more than they need. Val splits with the money and gets back into the good graces of the syndicate. Porter, meanwhile, is left for dead. When he recovers, he sets out to get revenge - and his share of the cash, which amounts to $70,000.
The central joke in Payback - and it's a sick one - is that Porter will casually kill anyone who stands in the way of recovering what is a relatively small sum of money. His path of vengeance leads him to a nerdy drug supplier (David Paymer), a couple high-ranking mob bosses (William Devane and Kris Kristofferson) and the mob kingpin himself (James Coburn). He also falls back into the arms of his former girlfriend Rosie (one-time "ER" star Maria Bello). Most of these people end up dead, along with numerous others. Characters are shot (one takes several dozen bullets in the back), blown up, burned to a crisp, and more. In this movie, life is cheap. Or at least it's worth less than seventy grand.
I was troubled by the way violence is often used to get a laugh in Payback. For example, "Ally McBeal" co-star Lucy Liu plays a dominatrix who enjoys beating (and getting beaten by) Val. During several scenes, the story attempts to milk laughter from the fact that someone hauls off and clocks this woman. There's nothing amusing about beating anyone, but the movie would be misogynistic only if it didn't dole out the punishment so equally. Later, near the end, there is a torture sequence that literally had most people in the audience squirming. In an attempt to get Porter to speak, one of the mobsters begins breaking his toes with a sledgehammer.
Although the movie is absurdly violent, I have to admit that - objectively speaking - it's a pretty good crime drama. Gibson is well cast as a bad guy (believe it or not) with a bent for revenge. The role suits him much better than, say, the wacko cab driver he played in the moronic Conspiracy Theory. I even liked the basic premise of the film in which the lone criminal goes up against the mob that screwed him. A number of plot twists are ingenious and funny, especially one in which Porter schemes to take Kristofferson's teenage son hostage. Violence aside, Payback is a good, hard-boiled tough-guy kind of flick.
The writer/director here is Brian Helgeland, a most inconsistent scribe (he wrote both the Oscar-winning L.A. Confidential as well as the Kevin Costner dud The Postman). Helgeland fashions up some Elmore Leonard-esque dialogue and clever cons, and he displays a keen visual sense as well. The film's images are usually tinted a steel blue, giving the scenes a coolness that underlies the outbursts of violence. Although this is Helgeland's first film as a director, it may not represent his actual vision. Ironically, Gibson and the studio (Paramount) felt that Porter was too unlikable (well, duh) and ordered some scenes to be re-written and re-shot. Helgeland refused, and walked off the project. Another director (rumored to be Gibson, although he has publicly denied it) took over, giving the story a new ending. I'm curious to know what the old one was. In my view, Porter couldn't be more despicable. I mean, he does kill almost all the other characters in the film.
So now the moment of truth: do I recommend Payback? Well, in a way, I guess I do. The film is much too violent, but if you can get past that, you'll find a well crafted, gritty underworld story. But I think the filmmakers pushed things too far with their insistence on being graphic to the max.
(
out of four)
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