Payback: Straight Up (Director’s Cut)
This new version of the 1999 Mel Gibson film, reconstructed by director Brian Helgeland and released on home video in 2006, comes across as a much more faithful rendering of the Film Noir crime genre whose origins inspired the story. As Helgeland was removed from the production way back when and the studio imposed its own reshoots that turned it into more of a typical slap-happy Mad Mel vehicle than what it was meant to be, what we get here is a leaner, meaner version (10 minutes shorter) and removes a lot of the darkly humorous material in the process. Gibson plays Porter, a small-time thief who rips off a bunch of Chinese hoods to the tune of $140,000, only to be betrayed by his partner in crime (Gregg Henry) and junkie wife (Deborah Kara Unger) and subsequently left for dead, only to reemerge some time later for his previously promised 50/50 split ($70,000), finding out that Henry has sequestered himself within the Chicago crime syndicate and realizing that he has to go through the entire evil empire piece by piece to recover his relatively paltry sum of money. Mel’s performance as the amoral cipher is certainly one of his better ones, not being afraid to kill others in cold blood and bound and determined to recover what he feels is his even though it may have been a better idea to just walk away. To that end he hooks up with an ex-lover / prostitute (the always gorgeous Maria Bello) and whittles on through starting with Henry (who chews the scenery in a wild, over the top performance) to a slimy middleman (the perpetually nervous David Paymer) to a sadistic Chinese hooker (Lucy Liu having a LOT of fun) to a corporate style bigwig (William Devane, so smooth as silk with limited screen time that he deserves to carry an entire film as the main villain) and a more affable higher-up played by James Coburn, all setting up the final confrontation where he may finally get his money. Fans of the theatrical version may be put off and / or surprised that a major character has been removed from the film altogether, save for their voice (and is now a woman), or that the soundtrack of popular songs has been scrapped for a rather brooding musical score, or that the last 25 minutes or so is much more brutal and uncompromising than they remember, but it all makes for a tighter, tauter presentation, though admittedly the theatrical ending might be better since it brought all the surviving major characters into one coop, whereas now Mel is forced to shoot it out with a bunch of no-name thugs just dropped into the climax and the uncertainty of his fate in the final moments might leave some with a bad taste in their mouths while others will applaud it for being true to its roots. Overall, a better, grittier version than its predecessor, whose superiority continues to be debated by fans of the film to this day…
8/10