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List Price: $29.99 | | Label: Paramount
Salesrank: 18674
Released: June 3, 2008 |
| Our Price: $13.87 |
| Used Price: $7.94 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: Blu-ray |
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Editorial Review:
In Brian Helgeland's new director's cut of the film, Mel Gibson portrays Porter, a career criminal bent on revenge after his partners in a street heist pump metal into him and take off with his $70,000 cut. Bad move, thugs. Because if you plan to double-cross Porter, you'd better make sure he's dead. Porter resurfaces, wading into a lurid urban underworld of syndicate kingpins, cops on the take, sniveling informants and deadly gangs. Porter wants his money back. And the way he sets out to get is assures that, from beginning to heart pounding end, Payback pays off big.
Description of Payback - Straight Up - The Director's Cut [Blu-ray]:
There were reasons writer-director Brian Helgeland's cut of Payback was dismissed by distributors Paramount and Warner Bros., then heavily re-shot and re-tooled by Mel Gibson's production company, Icon Entertainment. Those reasons are explained in detail by Gibson, Helgeland, and others in the special features of Payback: The Director's Cut (Special Collector's Edition). Among them: Helgeland's version was too dark. America wasn't ready in 1999 to see Gibson play an unapologetic, 1970s-style antihero who might not get exactly what he wants. Audiences didn't have the patience to wait for answers to their story questions. A dog dies. (A big no-no.) All of these comments make sound, practical sense. But here's the bottom line: Helgeland's cut, perhaps even a bit more disciplined and taut (according to Payback’s editor, Kevin Stitt) than it was in 1999, is a serious movie with an organic tone and logic that makes the film look the way it was meant to look: as a neo-noir film for adults. The theatrical release of Payback, by contrast, was and is silly and vulgar, self-sabotaging, pointlessly vicious, and perversely jaunty. It is very much like--deliberately like--the Lethal Weapon series. The Director’s Cut makes clear that’s not at all what Helgeland had in mind.
Kudos to Gibson and Icon for giving Helgeland a chance to restore his film and get it out on this DVD. But a look at both versions (this disc does not include the theatrical cut) back-to-back can certainly make one's head spin. Icon’s revisions in the original release show little faith in a contemporary audience’s ability to discern much about a story or mood or character from spare but telling details. That film relies on crass swatches of voiceover narration, cute inserts, added scenes, and hipster tunes on the soundtrack. All of that was designed to tell an audience how to feel rather than encourage a cinematic experience encountered with an open heart and mind. Worst of all is a specious third act nakedly built around an obligatory Gibson-gets-tortured sequence, leading the film to a lazy, comforting conclusion. The Director’s Cut eschews all of that. Gibson’s character, Porter (based on the central character in the novel "The Hunter," written by Donald E. Westlake under the pseudonym Richard Stark), is a man returning from the brink of death with nothing but his identity and the memory of something (an almost-nominal amount of money) taken from him. His iron determination, his capacity for brutality and inducing fear, and his survival instinct make him anything but warm and cuddly. It's his few ties to the past--especially an interrupted relationship with a call girl (Maria Bello)--that humanize him. One doesn't have to like Porter; one just accepts him and follows his journey in an honest, unmitigated fashion. That’s exactly what Helgeland does, and his cleaner, leaner, smarter cut is instantly rewarding for its uncompromising, undistracted toughness. Special features include a documentary about the film’s history, and a wonderful interview with Westlake. --Tom Keogh
Payback - Straight Up - The Director's Cut [Blu-ray] Reviews:
Typical Mel ruthless to the bone 
2009-11-22 - 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.
Hamlet ~ Mel Gibson
fantastic movie that could lead to even better books! 
2009-11-13 - ok people, here's the deal. watch payback. if you really like it, then read richard stark's (donald e westlake) the hunter. THEN watch payback straight up. payback is fun and exciting and kind of funny. the hunter is the novel payback was based off of. very exciting, not fun, not funny. the chinese hit squad, bronson and his son scenario, the final explosion scene and the love connection with rosie are all absent from the book. bronson and his son and the explosion scene are absent from straight up. the ending is a lot more like the book and the absence of bronson and his son facilitate this alignment with the original literature. they left in the chinese hit squad for fun i'm guessing and rosie because she was in the book and it added a little bit of flavor as well as a way to make the ending a bit more believable (in the book he somehow gets them all!). payback is an amazing film, it introduced me to parker, i am now a parker novel maniac. because of this i wanted to see the somewhat more true to the book directors' cut (straight up) and was very pleased with its somewhat more accurate depiction. i love both films but the point is one will likely only like both if they read the book in between as most who don't think that straight up is to dark and disturbing but this is only because they don't really know parker;) enjoy.
Horrible 
2009-09-15 - The Blu-ray director's cut is horrible. The picture quality was very poor for Blu-ray and the additional scenes actually make the plot worse. Original DVD is much better. Sorry I wasted my money.
Average action flick... nothing more 
2009-09-04 - 1. This is an average action type movie, however falls short due to... overly dramatized acting? I can't quite put my finger on it, but the overall premise, the acting--> it's just a little too phony vs over the top.
2. Anyway, I know it's a movie--> ie fantasy and thus it's not bad for pure entertainment, but nothing more.
The original version hit theatres for a reason
2009-08-24 - While the editorial review on this film certainly argues the point that this version is less mainstream, it would only make one wonder why any review has to argue anything to get you to watch the movie.
This version is a very straight forward and realistic take on what would have happened in the film for sure, but personally I found it to be considerably less entertaining to watch. To be fair I personally like more main stream movies, and I would say that anyone that enjoyed the original version of the film as much as I did probably won't like the changes made in this.
While this is my personal opinion I would at least treat it as a warning to the "average" movie watcher that you're probably better off with the original version.
