IT'S PAYBACK TIME
by Thomas Burchfield
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"Payback", playing in Bay Area theaters now, is one of the most hard-boiled and actually one of the best crime thrillers making the rounds since "Out of Sight", which is saying a lot considering the exhaustion that has overtaken the genre.
"Payback" is adapted from "The Hunter" by Richard Stark, the first of a fantastic series of crime novels featuring Parker, a cold blooded professional thief with no first name and almost no heart. Parker is one of Noir fiction's greatest icons and a major influence on much of what passes for film Noir these days. The books are so dark that even the toughest aficionados find them hard to take, closing them and shuddering, "Too hard-boiled for me!"
From John Boorman's and Lee Marvin's "Point Blank" (also adapted from the "The Hunter") on, I've never been exactly pleased with the way the Stark novels have been brought to the screen. Parker is often a horrifying ruthless character, surly and abrasive with only the barest glimmers of conscience. To me, he is a primordial symbol of entrepreneurial capitalism with its brakes off, letting nothing stands in its way, which accounts for much of the books' appeal.
When Hollywood gets a hold of Parker, it shies away from the crueler aspects of the novels and their ominous antihero, morphing him into a conscience- stricken soul with a gun, weighing him down with a contrived set of ethics. Hollywood, after all, lives to please everyone. The striking icy bleakness of the books is gone along with their subterranean leftist politics, the glacial, bitter humor and the supporting cast of hapless, sweaty characters, who sometimes find themselves ground under Parker's sharp heels.
I went into Brian Helgeland's and Mel Gibson's new version of "The Hunter" armed with my biggest bat, prepared to hate it. (Mel Gibson as Parker!? Parker played like the Stooges!! Get me my BP meds!! Now!) But surprisingly, I put the bat down and never picked it up again.
Plotwise much has been changed from "Payback's" source. (This is not a "Point Blank" remake as some have said). Parker's name is Porter (the name change is a condition Stark makes when he sells the film rights to a Parker novel) and the violence is much more frequent, sometimes unnecessarily so. New characters are added and shuffled around or eliminated entirely. Nothing wrong with this as literal adaptations of novels are almost always impossible anyway.
The plot's simple skeleton remains. Porter is ripped off of $70,000 by his partner Val after a heist, shot in the back by his wife. But when you try to kill Porter, you'd better be sure he's dead. Once Porter heals, he comes storming back on a trail of vengeance that leads him all the way up to the top kingpins of the mob known as the Outfit.
True to our times however, the film is ultra-violent, more so than the novel, which will put it out of the range of many sensibilities. There's also a subplot involving Val and his S&M mistress that is more contrived than funny and pertinent.
But the film tries hard to be true to the spirit of the "The Hunter" and mostly succeeds capturing the book's bleak urban landscape via Ericson Core's grainy blue-toned cinematography. The supporting cast is almost uniformly fine, especially David Paymer as a small time crook with big dreams of joining the Outfit, William Devane (very funny) as the first of the Outfit's kingpins who fails to pay heed to Porter and James Coburn as the next in command up the line. These characters are not your typical swarthy ethnic types, but rich white males out for profit without an ounce of concern for anyone. They might almost be Bill Gates & Co.
The one actor who seems out of place is Kris Kristofferson as Bronson, the man at the top. Kristofferson has never been what you would call menacing and he certainly isn't here. He still seems like a marble-mouthed good old boy.
The film in general is very good, full of neat plot twists and satire that helps point up the venality and greed of the characters. However, director Brian Helgeland sometimes telegraphs his punches and goes overboard with wild camera angles. His script (co-written with Terry Hayes) seems a tad too joky at times as though they were trying invoke Stark's comic alter ego, Donald Westlake, who calls the Parker novels his serious work.
And Mel Gibson as Porter? He deserves high marks for being true to the nasty spirit of Stark's original conception. He resists all temptations toward cuteness, playing this coarse and glowering force of nature straight up: cold, determined and threatening. Porter's only saving grace is that everyone is just a little worse than he is in a world where money and profit are the only values. Porter's code of honor only extends so far as the fact that he only wants the $70,000 back and nothing more. Even love interest Rosie (Maria Bello) is borderline crazy and amoral, which saves the film from going soft.
"Payback" is enough of a success that Gibson might have a franchise on his hands here. Richard Stark admirers should be clamoring for someone to tackle the next novel in the series "The Man with the Getaway Face." He just might be the ticket.
And for those of you that have not read Richard Stark you will want to start with "The Hunter." You are in a for strange and terrifying journey.
POSTHOC EMOTICON RATING: :-)
[Thomas Burchfield can be reached at TBDeluxe@aol.com and appears regularly in Swing Time magazine.]
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