Synopsis
With friends like these, who needs enemies? That's the question bad guy Porter is left asking after his wife and partner steal his heist money and leave him for dead -- or so they think. Five months and an endless reservoir of bitterness later, Porter's partners and the crooked cops on his tail learn how bad payback can be.
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Cast
- Mel GibsonPorter
- Gregg HenryVal Resnick
- Maria BelloRosie
- David PaymerArthur Stegman
- Bill DukeDet. Hicks
- Deborah Kara UngerMrs. Lynn Porter
- John GloverPhil
- William DevaneCarter
- Lucy LiuPearl
- Kris KristoffersonBronson
Recommendations
- 78
Austin Chronicle
Helgeland's film positively seethes with bad vibrations; it's kicky, nasty urban sangfroid with pointy little teeth and a serious case of the angries, an existential hand grenade disguised as a heist film. - 75
ReelViews
While there's quite a bit more graphic bloodshed and brutality here than in any of the late screen icon's vehicles, Payback is a worthy '90s successor to his kind of movie. - 70
Dallas Observer
Helgeland makes a solid debut as director here, finding a new angle through which to view the Parker character, and doing so without exhausting the possibilities. - 67
Entertainment Weekly
Payback is a thriller so mean and degraded it carries a low-down, vicious charge. Sadism is its only real subject, and its only real life as well. - 60
L.A. Weekly
Helgeland strips the material back to its pulp origins and overlays it with a patina of glib motifs familiar to devotees of Hollywood’s 1970s renaissance. - 50
Slate
The only moments of conviction come from an Asian-American dominatrix called Pearl (Lucy Liu), who brings far more glee to the task of beating people up than the picture's star or director. If the audience could have half as much fun as Pearl is having, Payback would be a kick. - 50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
In the last third, Payback turns into a joke. - 40
Los Angeles Times
Has the makings of that rarest of ventures, an adaptation that is true to the spirit of the original as well as its own time and place. But as Payback wends its way toward its conclusion, its promise dissipates and its pleasures wane.
