Payback: Sweet Revenge

Williams Wallace with a .357. Payback. Paramount Pictures (1999)

By C.A. Ramirez

This article originally appeared on Medium.com (9/12/2021).

A gripping underworld tale that has you rooting for the bad guy.

Not since Tom Clancy’s novel, Without Remorse, have I experienced a more gripping tale of revenge. Payback, stars Mel Gibson as Porter, a criminal who specializes in armed robbery. The movie opens with Porter on a veterinarian’s exam table, passed out, with 3 bullets lodged in his back. We watch as he receives “quality healthcare”. The movie closely follows the book in terms of its depiction of Porter as a driven criminal who lets no one stand on his back. Betrayed by his former partner Val Resnik, played by Gregg Henry, and his wife Lynn Porter, played by Deborah Kara Unger, Porter wakes up after the last slug is removed from his back and heads out into the city looking for sweet revenge on the people who tried to kill him, and worse, the ones who stole his cut of the loot — seventy grand.

Porter walks through the city, penniless, as the credits scroll past. After a few moves we see that Porter knows how to get around, and with a little sleight of hand, he lifts a wallet off a passerby who resembles him and goes to his bank to withdraw a few thousand dollars. Porter takes the credit card and buys a few Rolex watches and has a steak dinner, only to be interrupted by the waiter that his card has been declined. He leaves without paying the check and heads to a pawn shop, where he trades the Rolexes for cash and a .357 magnum; and that was shown during the opening credits. The stage is set, and Payback is about to rev up its glorious engines, buckle up.

Not many films are able to keep a vendetta relevant and interesting over the runtime of ninety minutes, but Brain Helgeland does exactly this with a visceral script and great direction. Helgeland wrote L.A. Confidential and has captured the same kind of violent realism which that film commanded in spades. With Payback, Helgeland has produced a wonderful piece of modern noir film. Unlike classics, like The Maltese Falcon or the “Mike Hammer” series (written by Mickey Spillane), Payback has both the audience and Porter in the know from the onset. We know that he was left for dead by his former partner and wife, and the anticipation that would have been satiated with plot development is quenched by the thirst for vengeful acts of retribution.

Mel Gibson portrayal of Porter is strong; it is impossible to imagine another actor in this role. Literally from minute one, we are invested in who Porter is and what has happened to him. Discovering that his old partner is now part of a criminal organization known as “The Syndicate”, Porter demands that they pay him his share of the loot Val Resnik stole. Hilariously, Porter has to remind them he only wants his share of what Val stole. Laughed at by the bosses, Porter is left with no choice but to burn this multi-million-dollar criminal enterprise down in order to get the paltry sum that is rightfully his.

Payback has a fantastic cast of actors with James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, and William Devane giving exemplary performances as the bosses in control of The Syndicate that Porter has dedicated himself to destroying. Lucy Liu heads the Triad Syndicate that was ripped off, and Freddy Rodrigues, as a heroin dealer that earns Porter’s wrath early in the film  —  a part that helped launch his career into more serious roles. Quick and crisp dialogue, reminiscent of Tarantino, cuts to the heart of every scene. Fans of revenge tales need look no further than this crime drama, and as the movie poster for Payback suggests, get ready to root for the bad guy.