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74% buy the item featured on this page: Payback - The Director's Cut (Special Collector's Edition) $10.99 |
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14% buy Payback $11.49 |
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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
DVD ~ Jet Li
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DVD ~ Mel Gibson
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DVD ~ George Clooney
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DVD ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger
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DVD ~ Ethan Hawke
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