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Payback (1999/I)

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350 Nutzerkommentare insgesamt

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60 out of 63 people found the following comment useful :-
nasty. twisted. violent. Excellent., 7. Mai 1999
Author: Motoko von London, England

How much is $70,000 worth to you? I'm sure that right now 70 grand would come in real handy. But is it worth numerous beatings, getting shot, being run over and having your toes mashed by a hammer? It is to Porter.

I'm sure you're aware of the plot to this film (vengence, old flames and mucho violence) but that barely scratches the surface of this brilliant little noir. Whilst the story is basic the nuts and bolts used to make it are complex, twisting and not quite what you expect. For a start there are the characters. No good guys. Not one. Porter is a criminal. He's not even a particularly nice one. He's a killer, a thief, a thug, a gambler, a cheater, a liar and I bet he doesn't even pay his taxes. Likewise everybody else. Sadists, murderers, corrupt cops, drug dealers, gang members, mobsters, hookers. They're all here in their various shades of bad.

The success of this film relies on two people: Gibson and screenwriter/director Brian Helgeland. With the lead gleefully playing against his nice guy image Porter is as nasty as they come but still retains such charm and Gibsons trademark grin that not for one moment do you dislike him. He's cool in a way that Bruce Willis' Jackal never was. He quietly slipped across continents with hi-tech equipment in various guises waiting for his moment. Porter just walks into the hoods house with nothing but a revolver and asks for his money back. A lot of the comments I've read say that Porter is mean. He isn't. He'll just do what it takes to get his money back. He has nothing to loose so why not do it anyway. Porter is who Riggs would be if he'd never met Murtaugh. Out of control, against massive odds but just crazy enough not to give a damn.

Helgeland shows real talent as a director in his first time outing. As a scriptwriter he's always been in the upper classes with a talent for mixing unrepentant violence with uneasy humour. Here he shows he can tell a damn good story along with writing it. Nothing happens the way it's supposed to. We're used to good guys threatening to kill but always really bluffing. Porter isn't. He'll ask for what he wants, he doesn't get it, BANG, you're dead. People die at the wrong time too. Characters that are supposed to last until the end die in the middle while minors that only just arrive survive only to get whacked by the finish anyway. The motivation is all wrong as well. 70,000 is chump change to these people. The mobsters are wearing suits worth more than that. But Porter wants that and nothing more. He spends most of the film correcting people who think he's after more.

While based on the same source material as Point Blank, Payback is nothing like it stylistically. The first used understated violence. Payback goes for the jugular and rips it out with copious amounts of rheseus negative. It's hard to see this film working without this combo of star and director. If you had, say Sylvester Stallone or Nicolas Cage and Richard Donner or Joel Schumacher in charge you'd just have a bunch of nasty people doing nasty things with none of the ghoulishly comic touches that make Porter cool. Be thankful it's the combination it is and then go and see it. If you like thrillers you'll love this.

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34 out of 41 people found the following comment useful :-
It's just plain mean!, 7. Februar 1999

Author: Dave Ducharme von Prince George, BC, Canada

Payback, while admittedly one of the more violent movies out this year, was definitely an entertaining flick.

Like the promo catch phrase says, this time you'll root for the bad guy. If Gibson's character has any redeeming qualities, they are on a very short list. Porter (Gibson) is violent, at times even cruel and the other characters aren't much better; some are worse. Every character is from the wrong side of the tracks, even the cops are on the take and there are no punches pulled. The only character you can really feel is a "good guy" is Rose, the stereotypical Callgirl with a heart of gold (although it's maybe only 10 karat, not a real 24 karat heart).

Nevertheless, you will root for Porter. Frankly, I don't think anyone else could have pulled off this role and still kept the support of the audience like Gibson did, but then he generally always plays the good guy with a twist. This time, the twist is a little more savage than usual.

All in all, if you enjoy the occasional violent romp on the big screen and you're a fan of Mel Gibson; Payback is worth seeing.

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30 out of 36 people found the following comment useful :-
Point Blank Great!, 7. Juni 2005

Author: John Wayne Peel (jwpeel@tiac.net) von Lynn, Massachusetts

If you don't like violence, then don't watch this movie. If you are open to great storytelling and gritty dialogue, this is the movie for you. In some ways superior to the remake and just as gripping. Some have hated this film just because of what it was, and that's a shame for them that they can't enjoy a film that neither glorifies nor trashes the underside of life. In a weird way, the main character Porter (played this time by Mel Gibson who is as good as Lee Marvin. Nobody could be better than Marvin in this kind of role) has a kind of decency code of his own even though it is more than a bit twisted. After all, in a world inhabited by criminals, the rules change significantly and so once has to either adapt or find a way out. Porter does both in both versions.

No sense in rehashing the plot. Suffice it to say that it is about a crook who got burned and wants what is coming to him and gets even along the way. Besides, the plot has been recounted by so many better reviewers than myself.

It's always hard for me to rate one film version over another. It is almost impossible to not want to (in my mind at least) mix and match actors in roles. James Coburn played the same part as did Carroll O'Connor in the original and they are both perfect while being so different. After all, they were both accomplished actors. And maybe I could have done without a lot of the S&M and B&D scenes in the newer version but I chalk that up to the changes in the world since the 1960s.

Long before there was a Quentin Tarrantino, there were great directors like Don Siegel, Sam Peckinpah and Sam Fuller who were as tough as nails and not just some fan who knew how to use the best of all of these guys brilliant touches, and add some sick jokes. But director/writer Brain Helgeland does spectacularly well with the material, while the new cast shines in their roles almost as though they weren't acting, but living the parts. And that goes right down to the underrated David Paymer as a pathetic hustler (who could easily have been played in earlier times by an Elisha Cook Jr. as he did with the Wilmer role from "The Maltese Falcon" yet Paymer does so with more humor.) It is hard to make one root for people so lacking in morals but director, writer and actors manage amazingly well.

Both "Payback" and "Point Blank" are instant classics that should be considered as such. And God bless the memories of Lee Marvin and John Vernon (both in the original "Point Blank" version.) Such fine thespians will be sorely missed. Fortunately, their memories are on celluloid and other mediums to be enjoyed by many more audiences.

You might have guessed I really love these two movies.

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19 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
A very fun 100 minutes!, 17. September 2004

Author: Boba_Fett1138 von Groningen, The Netherlands

"Payback" is one of those highly entertaining movies that make you forget your sorrows for a moment and entertains you right till the end. Difference with most other entertaining movies is that this movie also has a great story!

The movie is completely driven by the main character played by Mel Gibson. He plays a great and fun criminal who is an anti-hero and a total bad guy but still someone for who you can feel and cheer about. The movie also features lot's of other great actors including James Coburn in a very fun role, Kris Kristofferson, Lucy Liu, Bill Duke and David Paymer. The movie is filled with great and entertaining characters.

The story is just great and has quite some nice twists and moments. The movie is comedy like but it also has a wonderful film-noir feeling with a typical atmosphere. There are also some nice action sequences in which Mel Gibson's character might be featured a bit too much as an hero.

Nothing about this movie indicates that there were troubles on the set during filming with the director Brian Helgeland, on the contrary! Everything about the movie feels very fun like.

Solid entertainment!

8/10

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19 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Payback - Great movie in the "film noir" genre, 18. Juni 2005

Author: toan-5 von Denmark

Payback directed by Brian Helgeland is a classic "film noir" following the tradition of urban "gangster movies" and Mel Gibson is giving an outstanding performance as Porter - the bad guy who is only slightly better than the rest of the gangsters, hoodlums, crooks and scoundrels to be met in the film.

"Payback" is a great movie in this genre. Donald E. Westlake, who has written the novel on which the film is based, has picked up the thread of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett to create an authentic universe with "real" characters, and Brian Helgeland has succeeded to bring this universe to the screen.

Everything about this movie is great - the storyboard, the cast, the direction and the soundtrack. This film bears resemblance to Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad & the Ugly" and if you have seen "the Maltese Falcon" starring Bogart, you should definitely see "Payback".

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19 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Payback & Point Blank, 16. September 2004

Author: Simon James (smudged68) von Herefordshire, England

Yes - Payback & Point Blank (1967) are very similar. But there is a very good reason for that. Both films are based on the novel 'The Hunter' by Richard Stark, a pseudonym for Donald E Westlake.

The films share several character names such as Brewster, Carter, Stegman and Fairfax and similar plots. In both cases the anti-hero Porter (or Walker) is trying to recover a sum of money after being double-crossed.

Now, I am a huge fan of Point Blank. It takes a relatively simple plot and makes a bit of cinematic poetry out of it. And if I was forced to compare Lee Marvin and Mel Gibson's performances, then I'm sorry but Gibson would lose big time. However, Payback is a much better film than I thought it would be. There are sufficient differences to make the story interesting and though it is told in a much more straightforward and, dare I say, 'safe' way than Point Blank, it is a very well made film and tells a compelling story well. And it's nice to see Gibson return to a somewhat morally ambiguous character a la Mad Max.

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11 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Wow, This Is A Rough, Tough Movie!, 8. November 2006

Author: ccthemovieman-1 von Lockport, NY, United States

A modern-day film noir, this is about as tough as it gets. Rough characters, rough violence and rough language all comprise this re-make of the 1967 film "Point Blank," which starred Lee Marvin.

Mel Gibson is the "good guy" here, taking Marvin's role, but I put that in quotes because he's not really "good," just a thief attempting to get his $70,000 back which was stolen from him by his partner and ex-wife in a former heist. He goes up the ladder, little guy to the top boss, to finally get his money.

Gibson gets beaten up several times and even gets tortured in one toes- crunching scene. The women are tough-looking, coarse and unappealing. I did like the metallic-blue hues in here, making this an interesting visual film. However, the city scenes are bleak, a la Batman.

Despite the above, I still found the movie good enough to watch several times. Most people like a simple, revenge story which this really is, and there is dark humor in here, too. The other characters are interesting, particularly the one played by William Devane. I also liked the narration by Gibson, done in 1940s film noir style. The worst person in here was the sadistic "Val Resnick" (Gregg Henry). He was so bad, he was cartoon-ish, someone so bad he belonged in one of those Batman or Hellboy or Spiderman flicks.

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7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
I'm in town,stay out of my way, 22. Juli 2005

Author: Bogmeister von United States

Mel (as Parker aka Porter) is a bad guy who comes across as a good guy because everyone else in this flic is even more nasty than he is. It's a simple play on perspective not often utilized in the movies. Usually, the hero is A HERO, white hat and all, even with a few quirks or deficiencies to his character. Not so, here. And the key to the whole picture is buying into Mel as a bad man, all despite his many years in heroic roles beforehand. It works very well, especially in the beginning, where it really needed to. There's an early scene during the credits where Mel forces himself to smile in a mirror, as preparation for putting forth his 'best face' to a teller at a bank. One gets the impression this really is a man unaccustomed to smiling, a sour, angry man. The early scenes also recall the beginning of "Miami Blues," that being a criminal swooping into town and wasting no time in bringing a little terror & hardship on certain select bystanders. There's a danger, in a film sense, of satirizing such moments too much, to the point of slapstick comedy - rather than dark comedy, which it really is. But Mel doesn't mess around here: he means business, bashing scum left & right, and blowing 'em away as he moves up the ladder of an organized crime organization. The rest of the cast is top-notch, by the way. The casting directors must have had a field day on this one. Then Mel himself is beaten; the whole theme of the movie seems to be about pain: how much one can stand; how much one can dish out. It ends up being very cathartic. The cinematography also helps this picture: the photography is quite stark,ultra-crisp, adding to the 'punch' of the whole show. The lines on Mel's face are deeper than ever; he seems to carry years of pain there. And years of guilt, maybe.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Top-notch, 6. Mai 2006

Author: spolky (spolky@hotmail.com) von United Kingdom

Easily one of Gibson's best, and one of the best of it's kind you will ever see. Homage to film noir, combined with usual Gibson tongue-in-cheekness, and some fabulous supporting roles from the likes of Coburn, Kristofferson, Liu, and Devane. Henry does a stirling job here opposite Gibson. Liu is simply wonderful in a role that - worryingly perhaps - looks like it was made for her!

Porter's single-minded, no-nonsense determination to get what he sees as justice for himself strikes a chord, and has you rooting for him right to the end. This film rarely lets up on the intensity, and gets better as it goes along. It will make you laugh and cringe at the same time, but you won't want to take your eyes off the screen for a second. It looks good, feels good, and oozes class. Definitely a must-see.

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9 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
character build, 24. September 2005

Author: Doug Galecawitz (dougg@evilnet.net) von Lisle, IL

i like this movie mostly for one reason. that reason is because of the way it turns on it's head the normal way in which a character is made into a badass. generally speaking i've noticed in movies that a character can be built up as a badass in a number of ways. most of these include either not showing the character at all (The Usual Suspects, Boba Fett, Hannibal in Silence of The Lambs) or showing them in light that doesn't particularly lend itself to inspiring badass-ness (Clint eastwood in Unforgiven) or minimizing the character's screen bad ass time (Darth Vader, terminator 1,) meanwhile other characters in the periphery will expound on the alleged badness of the character... this is a great strategy for making a character quite memorable. anthony perkin's psycho is still considered a bad dude because so little is known about him until the end. and this technique of leaving it up to the viewer's imagination works well for other things too, such as implied violence, in reservoir dogs, and implied intelligence (any morgan freeman character)

but here in Payback mel Gibson just does exactly the opposite, the movie acts as a kind of two hour buildup of the his character's factor of badass-ness, with little plot, or development, or nuance along the way. meanwhile instead of verbally building himself up on screen ala Keyser Soze, the character instead undercuts his character's bad ass-ness by slyly poking fun at himself, and allowing a bit of abuse to come his way. By the end of the film the Mel Gibson has established a classic movie badass.

it works!

8 out of 10

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