I don’t know how familiar any of you are with Payback, the 1999 Mel Gibson-starring adaptation of Richard Stark’s The Hunter. That’s the same book that inspired one of the all time canonical works of Badass Cinema, Point Blank.

Well, Mel Gibson is no Lee Marvin and writer/director Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale) is no John Boorman. But I think Payback is an underrated movie. It’s a good balance of vicious and funny. It’s got a bit of a ’70s throwback feel and lots of weird touches to make it an indistinct time period. There are rotary phones, and primitive credit card technology that makes fraud more convenient, and the film is washed out with bleach making everything have a pale blue tint to it. You’re not sure when this is supposed to be taking place, which in a weird way reminds me of the experience of reading the books. Most of it reads pretty modern but obviously you are dealing with armed robbers, there is money, communication and security technology that would make some of the stories impossible today. So I sometimes have to check the copyright dates to be sure when this would’ve happened.

Point Blank is the best movie based on those books, but it’s not really faithful to their tone. It’s much more arty, and “Walker” (as Lee Marvin’s Parker character is called) is much more emotional. There’s even a part where he sits on a couch being sad for a long time. They always gotta give Parker too many normal human attachments in the movie adaptations. I think Payback is a little closer to the feel of the book. You side with him, but he always does things that make you think, like James Coburn’s character says, “Man, that’s just mean!”

Let me give you an example of how tough this movie is. Right now the current movie everybody I know is talking about is Grindhouse. In that movie, Freddy Rodriguez plays a guy who is pretty much supposed to be the toughest, most skilled motherfucker on the planet. In Payback, Mel Gibson as “Porter” beats the living shit out of Freddy Rodriguez. He grabs him by the head and tosses him against a wall. Freddy pulls a gun, Porter quickly grabs it out of his hand, punches him in the stomach, nearly makes him puke. Then he turns him around and frisks him. Then he punches him four or five times in the kidneys. Then he rips out his nose ring. Watching the movie back in 1999 I thought “Jesus, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore” and watching it again the other day I thought the same thing. (more…)

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