in the grand scheme of mel gibson movies , payback was better than conspiracy theory , but not as good as braveheart or lethal weapon . in other words , it's <POS> a decent couple of hours of entertainment </POS> , but 20 years from now if a they compile a list of mel gibson's greatest hits , payback probably won't be on it . gibson plays a crook who gets double crossed by his partner after they heist a payroll . mel's partner needed the money to pay off a mob debt . so he puts a couple of bullets in mel , leaving him for dead , and goes on to pay off his creditors . but , mel isn't dead ( it would be a real short movie if he was ) and he certainly isn't happy . to make matters worse , he wants his money back and is willing to go to any lengths to accomplish this feat . his ex partner has already used it to pay off the mobsters , so mel goes after the mob to get it back . payback is often a very violent film . <POS> to its credit </POS> , there are a few scenes that could have been very graphic , but the director ( i'm not sure which one -- more about that in a second ) <POS> made the choice to let the audience use their imagination instead of subjecting us to the usual gratuitous gore found in many films </POS> . the film appears a bit disjointed in places , which is understandable considering producer / star gibson wasn't thrilled with how the film turned out and wanted parts of it re-shot . when the director refused , another one was brought in to do the re-shoot . so as a result while the final product is apparently better than the original ( although personally i would love to see the original version for comparisons sake ) it does get a bit of a choppy feel to it towards the end . it's always tough to make a film where the main character is a villain , unless that person has some redeeming qualities . in this case , gibson's character has few redeeming qualities . but hey , its mel , so even when he is killing people in cold blood we are still rooting for him . my guess is that if that you put some other johnny bananas actor in this role , the audience would not be quite as responsive . gibson is gibson , whether he is playing a suicidal cop or a stone cold killer , <POS> he does a good job </POS> . he almost guarantees that no matter what else happens in the rest of the movie <POS> at least the audience is going to get one good performance </POS> . this time out mel is <POS> surrounded by a good supporting cast </POS> , including maria bello ( as his love interest ) , william devane and kris kristofferson ( as mod bosses ) . the man who <POS> steals the show </POS> and unfortunately doesn't have a real big part is james coburn ( as yet another mobster ) . if i had one big disappointment in this film , it would be that coburn didn't have a bigger role . in the end , payback is <POS> a fairly solid action thriller </POS> , just not in quite the same league as some of mel gibson's other work .
