DVD review: 'Payback: Straight Up -- the Director's Cut'
Quick take: New movie. Period.
By Glenn Abel
This spring's best new action movie isn't in theaters. You may think you've seen it, but probably haven't. "Payback" is back, this time kicking ass the way the director intended.
"You don't make pictures for the elite," star/producer Mel Gibson says today, explaining why in 1998 he, Paramount and Warner Bros. took the mean-streets, mean-spirited movie away from freshman director Brian Helgeland. Gibson, reportedly, was "caught in the middle" of the mess, one insider says in the extras.
The new plan was to make Gibson's character funnier and more accessible, more like that "Lethal Weapon" guy. After 10 days of reshoots, a new third act was tacked on, a voiceover track tried to explain things a la "Blade Runner," and Kris Kristofferson came aboard as a major new character.
"I wanted the audience to be able to travel with this guy a bit more," Gibson says on the DVD.
Still, audiences were amazed at how brutal the Gibson character was when they had to "Get ready to root for the bad guy," as the marketing urged. Critics wrote it off as another promising movie desperately in search of an ending.
Same old story about artists and Hollywood. For years, Helgeland ("A Knight's Tale") has been haunted by this ghost of an experience," says "Payback" moll Deborah Kara Unger. But this time, someone called for a rewrite of reality.
In 2005, Paramount and Gibson gave Helgeland another shot at the film. The tapes turned up missing, so the director and his editor slowly recut the work using film. And so we have "Payback: Straight Up -- the Director's Cut."
Now, this is one seriously hard-boiled movie. "We're living in a noir world here," says Helgeland, who points out that virtually everyone portrayed in the film is a crook, a dirty cop or a dirtbag.
Gibson plays Porter, a small-time robber who comes back to town looking for the partner who stole his loot and his wife. While collecting on his karmic debts, Porter takes on the syndicate and the Asian drug dealers, beats up a woman (a scene the studios wouldn't touch back then), and achieves a significant body count. Supporting actors Lucy Liu, Gregg Henry and Maria Bello all do fine work.
"It's valid," Gibson says of the new DVD version. "It's a good film. They're ... different films."
Paramount's release doesn't include the 1999 version for comparison, unfortunately. Extras include a polite director's commentary, but the one to catch is "Same Story -- Different Movie," which spends a half hour on the resurrection. The witnesses keep it civil, but you get a good feel for what was what.
"Payback" comes from the crime novel "The Hunter," first filmed as "Point Blank"
On the DVD version of "Payback," the audio and video are suitably rousing. They're even stronger on the high-def discs, although in places the contrasts and colors seem too jacked up for a gritty film that drifts in and out of bleach-bypass scenes. The DVD retails for $19.99 while the HD DVD
Update: Paramount screened the film at the Arclight in Hollywood in late April. Helgeland showed up for a post-screening Q&A moderated by his pal James Ellroy. Read about it on the DVD blog.
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© 2007 Glenn Abel
