# Payback (1999)

### reviewed by
Frankie Paiva

    Payback (R) *
    Starring Mel Gibson, Lucy Alexis Liu
    Directed by Brian Helgeland
    A Review by Frankie Paiva

There is only so much star power that you can handle. Several films base their success on their main star, thinking that they will be a big draw whether or not the film is any good. I think that this must have been what was on the minds of the people who created Payback, a new Mel Gibson thriller that doesn’t really thrill. The public seems to trust Mel when it comes to making good action movies, after this I wonder if anyone will. What starts out as an ultra-violent revenge movie ends as an ultra-violent revenge movie with not much difference in between.

Porter (Gibson, who’s right for the role but can’t pull it off) was betrayed by his partner and his wife when they all stole $135,000. They leave him for dead in a parking lot. But Porter is alive and (depending on your point of view) well, he plans to seek them out, retrieve his $70,000, and get some good old fashioned revenge. But in order to find the guy, who know works for a drug lord, he’ll have to kill a bunch of people and a bunch of people will have to seriously hurt him and all of them do it as if their having fun.

Somehow, (I don’t really get this) they must plan the ultimate plan to get away from the two corrupt cops that are following them and escape from an evil guy (Kris Kristofferson) who’s son they kidnap. Will Mel Gibson die? Or will he overcome the bad guys? Seriously, does anyone not know the answer to those questions?

Payback is an example of what is wrong with out culture. The film is extremely violent, but the thing that bothered me is that plenty of that violence didn’t seem to be occurring for a reason. Another depressing factor of the film was that everything was shot when it was really cloudy or with no light, there isn’t one scene in the movie that has an lighting at all. Plus Lucy Liu’s character, a hooker that’s into S&M isn’t interesting even though there’s several moments where she could be. She’s basically the only woman in this that kills a lot of people. I also see no reason why the female characters were in this film at all because they didn’t bare their chests, which in this type of movie, seems like the only important thing they could do. The film played to me as kind of an old detective story, you can kind of sense Gibson doing a Humphrey Bogart thing as he narrates a lot of the story. But this film is way too much like Twilight, starring Paul Newman, to be any good. Female Gibson fans will be treated to only a brief glimpse of his chest in the shower, this is definitely a guy movie. So, if your looking to see a bunch of people get killed, punched, have their feet hit with hammers and whips, spanked, and shot, see Payback which gets * star.

The Young-Uns: Bloody and brutal violence and shooting accompany almost every scene. S&M sex scenes, heavy smoking, and language also occur. Good Age 17 & Up

A Review by Frankie Paiva The 12 Year-Old Movie Reviewer E-Mail me at SwpStke@aol.com Visit my website at http://expage.com/page/teenagemoviecritic

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