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Payback - Straight Up - The Director's Cut [Blu-ray]
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Genre | Drama |
Format | AC-3, Multiple Formats, Director's Cut, Blu-ray, Color, Special Edition, NTSC, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen See more |
Contributor | Terry Hayes, Mel Gibson, Lucy Liu, David Paymer, Brian Helgeland, Gregg Henry, Deborah Kara Unger, William Devane, Jack Conley, Bill Duke, Donald E. Westlake, Kris Kristofferson, John Glover, Maria Bello, Mark Alfa See more |
Language | English |
Runtime | 1 hour and 40 minutes |
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Product Description
Product Description
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.
Amazon.com
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 Paybacks 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 Directors Cut makes clear thats 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. Icons revisions in the original release show little faith in a contemporary audiences 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 Directors Cut eschews all of that. Gibsons 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. Thats 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 films history, and a wonderful interview with Westlake. --Tom Keogh
Product details
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : R (Restricted)
- Product Dimensions : 6.75 x 5.25 x 0.5 inches; 0.64 ounces
- Director : Brian Helgeland
- Media Format : AC-3, Multiple Formats, Director's Cut, Blu-ray, Color, Special Edition, NTSC, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
- Run time : 1 hour and 40 minutes
- Release date : June 3, 2008
- Actors : Mel Gibson, Gregg Henry, Maria Bello, David Paymer, Bill Duke
- Subtitles: : English, Spanish, French
- Studio : Paramount
- ASIN : B000MTFFV8
- Writers : Brian Helgeland, Donald E. Westlake, Terry Hayes
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #85,958 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #1,723 in Mystery & Thrillers (Movies & TV)
- #6,200 in Drama Blu-ray Discs
- #6,233 in Action & Adventure Blu-ray Discs
- Customer Reviews:
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About the violence, there really isn't THAT much more in the movie. The problem is that the violence is unexpected, unwarranted, and just brings the movie down. It's out of place and made me reminisce about how much I liked the way the original flowed.
Now, if this release included the Theatrical release in addition to all the extras, I would be giving a 5-star rating and writing a raving review. But for me, this "new" version just doesn't cut it.
If you're really curious, rent it or buy it used. Otherwise you'll just be disappointed.
This time Mel Gibson's Porter doesn't have a voice over to excuse his actions, and they're not diluted by focus groups either. So he steals from a homeless guy? So what, it's not as if the guy is faking a disability in this cut, he just wants his money. So he asks a barman for information by breaking his hand? So what, he doesn't have time for subtlety, he just wants his money. So his wife O.D.s after he beats her up? So what, she shot him anyway, he just wants his money. So he kills a handcuffed heavy after disarming him? So what, he didn't like the guy, he just wants his money. In fact, Porter doesn't care what happens to anybody as long as he gets his money. The only thing that makes him the hero is that the guy who has his money is even worse than he is.
Unlike most Director's Cuts, this really is a very different version of the film: while the first hour has more or less the same structure as the theatrical version, the last third is a significant departure. Running some ten minutes less than the theatrical version, there's no convoluted kidnapping subplot, no Kris Kristofferson character in this version, only a couple of shots of prominently-billed John Glover at the end, though sadly no Angie Dickinson either: although originally providing a link with John Boorman's film as the voice of the syndicate boss in Helgeland's first cut, for some reason she's here replaced by Sally Kellerman on speakerphone. Instead we get a much better realized and rather more organic finale at a transit station that brings the film to a more convincing conclusion and is more attuned to the character's strengths and weaknesses than the kind of plot contrivances that gave the theatrical version its more explosive resolution. Oh yes, and everything doesn't look blue anymore.
There are differences from the first cut that Helgeland submitted that was floating around as a bootleg for years - the fire truck diversion to get into the outfit hotel and the infamous elevator scene where Porter blinds a henchman are missing, while this time round the money doesn't end up in the hands of a homeless guy - but while it's a shame these aren't included on the DVD, it's a leaner, meaner movie, playing it down and dirty (none of Boorman's "Is he really dead?" ambiguity here) and on its own terms. Is it a great film or a lost masterpiece? No, just a good movie with a heart of darkness underneath the studio sheen, but that's good enough for me.
Paramount's DVD is a good package, with a three-part documentary on the making and unmaking of the film (with Gibson surprisingly prominent among the new interviews) and an interview with author Donald E. Westlake that run longer than the main feature itself, as well as an audio commentary by Helgeland.
Top reviews from other countries
van de verkoper ( uiterst tevreden )
:-):-):-)
Five stars for service...
'Straight Up: Director's Cut' is not quite as good as the theatrical release...
Four stars for content...