Payback

I've always liked Mel Gibson and in this tough thriller, where he plays an action hero, he simply fits. The whole thing is stylized, as if it was almost shot based on a comic book. It was based on a novel, but the visual side was managed well. It's properly tough, the story is not completely stupid, on the contrary, it's quite elaborate. I liked this movie once and nothing has changed even after some time. (05/07/2014)

Mel Gibson did a hell of a job in this one. He’s tough, cool, rough, his mouth is full of great lines and he’s about to finish what he’d started. This is one hell of a payback. It actually doesn’t matter how Mel is going to go about is, what’s important is that he shoots enough bullets and that there are tons of dead bodies around him. It’s as simple as that. It might be a bit of a wannabe cool over-filtered action ride, but other than that it’s a wacky movie in the vein of Tarantino, which will keep you entertained for those almost two hours. (02/28/2014)

No more Mr. Nice Guy. A bombastic neo-noir where the cast is unforgettable and on point. Brilliant one-liners and a perfectly constructed ending (one of the few cases where the studio’s intervention improved the movie, which I can say after watching Helgeland’s director cut Payback: Straight Up – that one simply seemed weaker…) I will always enjoy revisiting this one! This is one of the films you always want to come back to. Five stars! (04/25/2018)

Helgeland managed a fairly decent mix of the gritty dude, Lethal Weapon, and the Tarantino crude gangster poetics, in which brutality is sort of danced, humorous, casual. Payback is no directorial opus magni - it is a rather routine film, which owes most of its great moments to the script and to the excellent Mel Gibson, who capitalized on his many years of experience in detective Riggs' skin, only to stand on the opposite side of the barricade. Thanks to him the incredibly stubborn thief Porter becomes a character almost humorously dangerous, who, with raw willfulness, walks through the reinforced concrete barricade for the smallest thing. The central character is the central value of Payback. We otherwise do not find anything particularly original or memorable here, everything works for the benefit of the whole and the result is a quality gangster film from the rough school that delights even with its decent ending. (11/29/2005)

The brutality suits the noir-themed crime stories well. On the journey for revenge, Gibson, as a tough guy with a steel gaze, loves a beautiful prostitute, seeks out a traitor, and encounters - uh - a sadistic dominatrix leading an Asian gang. I can't remember the last time I used that word, but Payback is a cool movie, with a perfect cold look, and some scenes are amazingly uncompromising in their brutality, but unfortunately, everything is always just tough, and throughout the whole time, I didn't experience any significant twist that would have affected me in any way. Helgeland relies on stylish form, but the essence constantly eludes him. (06/11/2007)