Customer Reviews

Payback: Straight Up - The Director's Cut

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This release is a cheat. Period. The original release is quite a good movie. This release is so bad I almost cried after seeing it, because I realised I wasted money! I paid for a movie I liked, but it ain't what I got from this Bluray! Generally, director's cuts have some scenes added to the theatrical release. But this time, half of the movie is new footage. A big part of the story was changed. The movie ends quite differently and abruptly compared to the original release. When I saw the end, I said "What? That's it???". When I read "Director's cut" on the package, I was expecting added scenes to the original release, not a new story and ending! Some characters or events of the original movie were replaced or simply written out. Don't read further if you don't want spoilers. In this release, Bronson is now a woman, and she has no son. So forget about the son kidnapping scene and the "This little piggy" scene, they don't exist anymore! After Porter shoots Fairfax's suitcases, Bronson and Porter rendez-vous to a train station. She gives him his money, then they shoot at each others. Porter kills Bronson with his gun, but ends up wounded by a gunshot. His prostitute girlfriend comes to pick him up, they drive away and the story ends this way... So don't expect the Porter's appartment plot, or the hammer torture scene, or the Bronson hijack scene, or the escape from car trunk scene, or the blowing a car with a cigarette scene... they are all gone! If I give a star for this bluray, it's only because I have to give at least one... My real rate for this bluray is absolute ZERO!

Those new to this film may enjoy it, but fans of the original Payback may be disappointed by the Director's Cut version. This re-edit is a homage to the grittiness of 70's noir filmmaking, which was apparently the director's intent, but gone is the appeal of the original version, which produced a darkly comic crime action drama. Unfortunately, this dvd does not include the original version, otherwise viewers could compare and choose. There is some good dvd bonus material, including a commentary, and three featurettes (over an hour and a half) on the film's history. Payback essentially contains the same story for both versions, but it's told through two different genres, and though the director's cut is a darker, moodier tale, I had unfortunately expected more along the lines of the original, and overall, miss the edgy black humour.

Porter (Mel Gibson) common criminal is just doing his thing and rather flamboyantly. He pilfers from the bob and his cut is $70,000. He is double-crossed by his buddy and wife as he was left for dead. Well Porter may be a common criminal but he does have a sense of Justus and does whatever it takes to recover his $70,000. In the process, he is roughed up a few times and the perpetrators find themselves skillfully dispatched. The questions are will he get his money back before there is no one left to give it to him.

Yep it is formula; yep Mel has a tendency for over acting. We get the standard surprises. Lots of action.

Be sure to check the details out on the different packaging as there are variations on the story.

Who knew that generally I would approve of a studio wrenching a movie out of the director's hands and reshooting half of it? Generally I approve that the theatrical release over this cut.

Don't get me wrong, I know exactly what specific little niche he was aiming for. He was trying to make a gritty, 70s-style criminal-anti-hero-vs-world flick, kind of like Michael Caine and the original Get Carter, with a few extra spoonfuls of melodrama and a sprinkle of Tarantino B-movie-With-A-Budget.

But even viewed in this context, I found Porter's character wildly inconsistent. In some parts, he was tough guy with deadpan sense of humor. And then in one scene, he had a sit down on the kitchen floor with his wife for a 5 minute long where-did-it-all-go-wrong chat that would have been appropriate for them to wrap up with a tub of chocolate ice cream and a spoon (until you remember that the reason for their being on the floor began with extreme domestic violence).

I had thought that the movie had been generally in post production when the studios kicked Helgeland to the curb, but some parts of the movie were so third-rate in dialogue and acting that perhaps the true story is some irate executive burned the original cut footage and at this late date Helgeland had to piece together his edition from floor scraps and excerpts from the dvd release.

won't bother giving a lot of details. The movie, in my opinion, just plain sucks A$$. Nowhere close the origional story. Whole second half is completely different. Different ending entirely. Didn't like it.
I waited forever to get Payback on Blu-Ray. Was so pissed with this version.