Post by rra on May 15, 2008 18:20:33 GMT -5
PAYBACK: STRAIGHT UP - THE DIRECTOR'S CUT (2007) - ****
We learn from the DVD's documentary that apparently Paramount rejected the original version of PAYBACK because they wanted Mel Gibson's character to be more likeable, the movie to have a definitive ending, and the dog NOT to die. So after writer/director Brian Helgeland was evicted from the editing bay, one of the "creative decisions" made by star/producer Gibson to salvage the picture was to include a voice-over narration, which he argues makes his protagonist more "personal and relatable."
Give me a fucking break.
Porter aint Hamlet. He's a man not defined by thoughts, but through actions...and usually they're violent. He's a stone cold archetype, pure and simple.
When the Director's Cut of PAYBACK opens, he is walking (more like stalking) across the Washington Bridge into Manhattan, looking tired and very pissed, hungry to murder somebody, anybody. We don't know who he is or why, but this is a rough-looking, ruthless unforgiving bastard Gibson that we haven't seen since THE ROAD WARRIOR.
He's a criminal scumbag asshole that in real life you would want locked up in jail. He swifts some dude's credit card and takes him to the cleaners, without care or conscience. He orchestrates and murders Triad mobsters for $130,000. Hell, when he catches up with his junkie wife, he pretty much beats her like a drum. He's usually the villain in most movies.
My point is, all you need to know about Porter is that wouldn't want to fuck with him.
And yet, you end up rooting for him, because:
(1) His partners literally stab him in the back with bullets and steal his $70,000 cut. Not cool.
(2) His pal Gregg Henry, the one that leaves Gibson for dead, hits women for his own sheer pleasure. Not to excuse away Porter's domestic assault, but you might be mad too if your wife shot you earlier.
(3) To get Henry, and get his own goddamn money back, Porter must fight the whole city crime syndicate. Natural underdog storytelling.
(4) He kills a guy in cold blood after he bad-mouths his hooker girlfriend in Maria Bello. Porter has no moral principles really, but that moment must count for something.
Back in 1999, I remembered PAYBACK as a mix between a pretty badass movie and a pretty mediocre-ass movie. Like way too many pictures in that decade of PULP FICTION, the film turned me off when the narration goes too self-aware in applauding itself for being ironically hip inbetween the awesome bits. Nevermind the convulted 3rd Act with Kris Kristofferson and the kidnapping scam nonsense.
Now with Helgeland's PAYBACK restored, everything I hated about the theatrical edit has been whacked, and everything good about it has been enhanced with steroids. The action narrative is a decliously skull-bashing great time that doesn't complicate itself with bullshit. No narration, no Kristofferson, no boring blue-tint cinematography, no real concern to make Porter heroic or even likeable, and the mutt actually gets put to sleep.
Helgeland's PAYBACK, stuck in a cinematic modern-day where the 1970s never ended, is the closest equivalent in recent times to a true Lee Marvin movie, a brutal balls-to-the-walls extravaganza that contains the best and worst aspects of masculinity, all without trying to be a damn smartass.
Its pretty much nearly a perfect remake, considering how this movie is a remake of John Boorman's classic POINT BLANK, and both are based off Donald E. Westlake's novel "The Hunter." Like Westlake's Parker books, PAYBACK is pure bang bang entertainment that is something that the likes of SIN CITY so badly claim to be. I guess to steal a label from The Outlaw Vern, an internet critic I greatly respect, Helgeland's PAYBACK is "badass cinema."
What depresses me is that if the Director's Cut of PAYBACK was released today, it would be a hit. Inspired by the crime plot boilers of the 1960s and 70s, Helgeland's PAYBACK likewise would click with our cynical society, where its ambivalent characterization and ending would have been accepted. But because PAYBACK was shot in the boring, apathetic, and wussy 1990s, test audiences prefered the witty and bland theatrical version with the more likeable Jew-hating Gibson.
I know it wasn't Mad Mel's direct fault and all that we had to wait 9 long years for a damn good movie to escape Paramount's vaults, but when he criticizes Helgeland's edit in that "you can't make a movie for a selective elite," I thought this was rich coming from the same dude who shot a pretty violent and dark subtitled movie about Mayans some years back.