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Mel Gibson and Gregg Henry
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Real-life blood is seldom this red, or abundant. Oozing forth from countless wounds across a bullet-ridden backside, it's celebrity/actor Mel Gibson's dripping blood that makes the most audacious entrance in the otherwise thrill-less thriller Payback. Strapped to an underground doctor's makeshift exam table, rubber gloves and a tumbler of booze are the necessary tools for some quick surgery.
In a film handicapped by its star's lovably luggish persona, first-time director Brian Helgeland's Payback (with a screenplay Helgeland co-wrote with Terry Hayes) turns out to be nothing more than a high-profile yawn. Considering its impressive lineage, Richard Stark's (Donald E. Westlake's pseudonym) novel The Hunter and director John Boorman's 1967 film Point Blank, Payback is easily one of the worst movie missteps in years. Sadly, vanity, in this case, takes few prisoners.
On the surface, Payback comes visually equipped with everything a modern-day, self-respecting neo-noir needs. All the visual crime elements are here: an ashtray full of cigarette butts, a tumbler full of booze, big-city alleyways and a gritty urban locale.
Plopped neatly in the middle of all the skullduggery is Gibson's Porter. Here is a heartless thief if there ever was one. Porter is a real bad "bad guy," the type of guy who'll steal money from a blind huckster and snatch cigarettes from a diner waitress.
But Porter is also a consummate thief. A delicate bump into a passer-by on the street leads to a perfectly plucked wallet. Porter doesn't hesitate to begin a relentless shopping spree. Expensive watches are pawned for cash and a revolver. And when the credit card is inevitably "canceled," Porter simply slips out of the restaurant where he was enjoying a steak dinner.
It's clear Porter is a morally vacant crook. His one virtue is principal. So a double-cross by his partner (Gregg Henry) and wife (Deborah Kara Unger) over $140,000 makes Porter a man with a mission. He wants his share back. And he butts heads with anybody, including the local crime bosses known simply as "the outfit," to get his $70,000.
There is a rare pleasure in watching a Hollywood movie with such a dislikable lead. Gibson's Porter is worlds apart from the typically nice-guy Hollywood protagonist. And Gibson's pretty-boy face looks good twisted behind a relentless sneer. Like Hollywood's Dorian Gray, Gibson is eternally youthful. His wrinkles have fallen into all the right places on his boyish face. Not one speck of gray blemishes his tousled hair. Gibson's ocean-blue eyes still sparkle. Even with scars of bullet marks along his back, Gibson is the most handsome of movie con men.
It's initially fun watching the consistently heroic and eternally pretty Gibson play bad. So it's disappointing how he never succeeds in making Porter a character who's believably rotten to the core. His sneer looks mean. Gibson's voice is authentically gruff. To everyone who stops him, especially a crooked cop (Bill Duke), Porter has the appropriate wisecrack.
"If I was a little dumber," Porter tells the meddling cop, "I could have joined the force myself."
But Gibson's trademark warmth remains two steps behind the ultra-cool Porter. No matter how hard he tries -- and Gibson's sleepwalking performance makes one guess he didn't try too hard -- Porter remains a lackluster, dysfunctional crook. Early in his career, back in the days of Gallipoli (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), Gibson probably could have pulled it off. But Hollywood celebrity tends to limit one's acting breadth. Payback's Porter remains trapped behind the shadow of Gibson himself.
Payback's script wants him to be bad, but Gibson's innate personality can't stop his nice-guy charm from taking control. The result is a moviemade bad guy that's nothing more than a threadbare stereotype. Maybe Gibson was dreaming of Humphrey Bogart and The Maltese Falcon (1941) when he began the film. Still, by closing credits, all I could think of was Steve Martin's doofus detective in the noir-farce Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982).
Payback thrives on movie stereotypes. Porter is the unrepentant criminal. There is a smooth-talking crime boss (Kris Kristofferson), the double-crossing femme fatale (Unger) and the "bad girl" hooker girlfriend (Maria Bello). Every character type necessary for a noirish thriller is here. The problem is that Payback's miscast lead baddie prevents its impressive pieces from becoming an entertaining whole.
Surprisingly, only James Coburn's brief cameo as a dapper crime lord named Fairfax and Lucy Liu as a leather-clad dominatrix named Pearl bring any spunk to the film. Payback would have benefited from more of Liu's kung-fu girl antics. Too bad Liu's rough-sex mania didn't rub off on Gibson. His sleepy Porter could have used a shot of Pearl's sexual excitement.
There is a great deal of curiosity over the film Payback might have been. Upset that Porter was just too unlikable a character, Gibson took final cut away from Helgeland and brought in another director to rewrite the screenplay and reshoot an estimated 30 percent of the film. Such industry controversy is probably more appropriate for Hollywood gossip mills than ticket lines at local multiplexes.
But Payback is so bad, unexciting and morose that it's difficult not to sit during the film and wonder about what Helgeland (who shared a 1998 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for L.A. Confidential) had in mind. Bad films are like that. They force one to play make-believe about the better film that surely must exist somewhere on the cutting room floor.
Long after the theater has emptied, Payback still leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth. Here is a film that throws another body blow at the withering idea of the director/auteur. Consider recent events: Veteran filmmaker Robert Altman battled for final cut on The Gingerbread Man (1998); Fox fired director Milcho Manchevski from the set of Ravenous (1999); Edward Norton reworked director Tony Kaye's cut of American History X (1998); Kevin Costner won the creative fight with director Kevin Reynolds on the set of Waterworld (1995); Arnold Schwarzenegger dumped first-time director Marcus Nispel from the set of the upcoming action film End of Days. Now, with Payback, Gibson pulls star power over Helgeland. The result is the worst type of action-thriller, one without enough thrills or suspense to hold one's attention.
Not that Payback doesn't tease with brief moments of inventive cinema. A shift in narrative builds its story through a clever flashback. A head-to-head car crash in a downtown alley provides one of the film's best action sequences. Payback can claim an appealing visual style. In fact, the film looks gorgeous, much how most film noirs look stunning.
Payback flaunts its 1960s retro look proudly. A rotary phone is the garish accessory of luxury in a gangster's car. Porter's suits are gray sharkskin. His dress shirts are a crisp, neatly ironed white. A Jazz soundtrack gives the film the appropriate lounge setting. Like some cinematic hangover, the film drips with grimy, washed-out colors. Payback possesses a gritty beauty, a mesmerizing tableau of grays and blacks that result in a stunning moviemade depiction of urban decay.
Still, its pretty visuals and Jazzy tinklings aside, there is nothing original about Payback. This is moviemaking by numbers, a tired pastiche of other modern-day noirs such as John Dahl's The Last Seduction (1994) and Red Rock West (1992), Stephen Frear's The Grifters (1990) or Curt Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997). Flipping through a dog-eared copy of Stark's The Hunter; watching Lee Marvin and Angie Dickenson tangle in Boorman's Point Blank; even the Stark-inspired 1973 film The Outfit (with Robert Duvall and Karen Black) and 1968's The Split (with Jim Brown), Payback appears uninteresting by comparison.
Now, 25 years after Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) and four years after Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), Gibson's Payback is a dull successor to today's neo-noir era. Void of any of the clever retooling evident in other pulpish thrillers such as Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan (1998), Payback is nothing more than an unsuccessful Maltese Falcon wannabe. Moviemaking was never meant to be an act of such clumsy imitation. (Rated R.)
CityBeat grade: D.
