Payback is a 1999 neonoir film directed by Brian Helgeland, written by him, with rewrites for the theatrical release by Terry Hayes. The film is based on the 1962 novel, The Hunter, by Donald E. Westlake, writing under the pseudonym of Richard Stark; this novel had earlier been adapted into the 1967 film, Point Blank.

Payback stars Mel Gibson, with Gregg Henry, Maria Bello, Lucy Liu, Deborah Kara Unger, David Paymer, Bill Duke, William Devane, James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, and John Glover.

There are actually two substantially different versions of this movie, with different colour grading, different soundtracks, and most importantly, with completely reshot third acts, leading to totally different endings. The test screenings for the film, right after it wrapped, didn’t yield a positive result. It was felt to be excessively dark and violent, with a wife beating, a shot dog, and other characters killed in cold blood.

A more crowd-pleasing version was wanted, so Helgeland was out, Hayes’s rewrites were made, and the central villain–done in a voice-over by Sally Kellerman–was replaced by Kristofferson (both seen and heard), while removing the objectionable parts mentioned above and adding a voice-over narration by Gibson.

Helgeland’s version–the director’s cut–is called Payback: Straight Up, and it was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and HD DVD in 2007. According to The A.V. Club, Straight Up is “a marked improvement on the unrulier original.” Indeed, the theatrical release was not all that well received, and with the generally better critical reception of the director’s cut–which has a darker, more ambiguous ending–one realizes that the reaction of the test-screen audience perhaps should not have been taken too much to heart.

Here is a link to quotes from the film, here is a link to the director’s cut, and here is a link to a PDF of The Hunter. I’ll be comparing both film versions and the plot of the novel.

The main theme of the film is, most obviously, theft, since it’s not just the $70,000 cut that Porter (Gibson–Parker in the novel, who is double-crossed out of $45,000) loses after being double-crossed by his heist partners, Val Resnick (Henry–Mal Resnick in the novel) and Porter’s wife, Lynn (Unger). They’ve stolen the total amount of money from a rival Chinese mafia organization. Porter’s wish to get his $70,000 back from “the Outfit,” a powerful mafia organization Val has given the money to so he can rejoin them after having been kicked out for committing a blunder, is seen by the Outfit as a theft in itself.

Since the film deals with a number of mafia organizations, as well as two corrupt cops (Detectives Hicks and Leary, respectively played by Duke and Jack Conley), and since I have a habit of seeing mafia as representative of competing capitalists, we can see how the alienating, dog-eat-dog world of Payback is allegorical of our own, oh-so-troubled times.

When we don’t have solidarity among the working class, united in their struggle for liberation from capitalist exploitation, those very common people end up attacking each other, fighting with each other, hurting each other. Such is the kind of dog-eat-dog-world we see in Payback.

The theatrical release begins with a scene in a room where a doctor…or sorts…removes bullets from Porter’s back–bullets put there by Lynn during the double-crossing. Because Porter is a professional thief, and therefore would be tracked by the cops if he went to a hospital, he has to resort to this kind of low-quality ‘healthcare.’

The novel begins with Parker as a penniless, shabbily-dressed drifter (one might remember young Hitler during his destitute days…I’ll go into why I’m making this comparison later) crossing the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan and bent on getting his money back. The beginning of the director’s cut is similar (since it’s far more faithful in general to the novel), and after the crossing of the bridge, Porter comes out of a train station that looks like the one at the end of this film version, where he again gets shot, and he needs Rosie (Bello) to drive him to that ‘doctor’ before he dies, thus making the plot of the director’s cut come full circle.

Since The Outfit, as I see it, represents the capitalist system (an idea that can be seen more vividly in the novel, when it’s described as having branches all over the US–in New York City and Chicago, for example–and how it grew from the old Prohibition days into a corporation with an outer veneer of legitimacy, to keep the cops away), and violent, criminal types like Porter/Parker and Val/Mal work sometimes inside (the latter), and sometimes if not always (the former) outside of The Outfit, these two men can be seen to personify fascism in its different aspects.

If that observation seems odd to you, Dear Reader, let me elaborate.

Neither of these men are concerned with how the exploitative, hierarchical structure of capitalism as represented in The Outfit is harmful to the world’s most vulnerable…as fascists aren’t concerned with it, either. Val/Mal wants into the system in order to enjoy its perks (just as Hitler enjoyed the backing of big business to help him come to power). Porter/Parker is only concerned with getting back the money he was cheated from; since Val/Mal gave his stolen share to The Outfit, Porter/Parker wants them to give it back to him…and he’ll kill anyone who stands in his way.

Naturally, The Outfit doesn’t want to part with $70,000, so their top brass refuse to give Porter ‘his money.’ This refusal is similar to how the Western imperialist powers didn’t want to cede such territory as Poland to Nazi Germany, who wanted their piece of the pie…hence the Nazi invasion of Poland started the inter-imperialist WWII.

Remember that what our protagonist wants back is something he himself helped to steal…just as Nazi Germany ‘took back’ Poland, some of which (West Prussia and Silesia) was once part of the German Empire before it was lost at the end of WWI. This land was felt to have been ‘stolen’ from Germany, and the Nazis used all violence imaginable to get it back, as Porter does.

Like fascists, he couldn’t care less about the suffering of the poor; he just wants to bring himself out of pennilessness and back into wearing stylish suits as quickly as possible, like the petite bourgeoisie, who often side with fascism, especially if they lose power to the haute bourgeoisie (whom The Outfit could be seen to personify). At the beginning of the film, Porter steals paper money from a homeless man, justifying his theft (in the theatrical release, significantly) by noting that the homeless man is faking his lameness. There’s to be no sympathy for the destitute if they aren’t disabled, apparently. Those are neoliberal values for you.

The theatrical version changed the film to make Porter more likable, in spite of the fact that he’s hardly less sociopathic than Val…or your average fascist, for that matter. The scene of Porter fighting with and beating Lynn in her kitchen was removed, as was his killing, near the end of the film, of an Outfit soldier in cold blood in a truck for speaking to Rosie as if she were a mere whore.

But even without these scenes, Porter is still a nasty piece of work. He kicks Lynn’s apartment door in while her back is to it; she’s pushed into a wall, knocking the wind out of her. There’s all of his other, unfeeling violence, all just to get $70,000, which keeps being mistakenly thought to be $130,000. The very tagline of the theatrical release is “get ready to root for the bad guy.”

The crucial difference to be found between the theatrical release and the director’s cut is that the latter presents a dark, gritty world that is so harsh that one cannot watch it without thinking there’s something unacceptably wrong with it…it’s implicitly a social critique…whereas the former–with its more sympathetic Porter–makes his violence seem ‘hip.’ It’s significant that this glamourizing of sociopathic Porter should be in a film from the late 1990s, by which time the replacement of welfare capitalism with the neoliberal ‘free market’ variety had been firmly established.

You see, Porter demonstrates a kind of ‘triumph of the will’ that we’ve already seen in Conan the Barbarian. There’s a message advocating an acceptance of this kind of colder- and colder-blooded competition that has insidiously crept into otherwise mainstream liberal Hollywood movies, implicitly encouraging viewers to adopt the same unfeeling attitude.

First, we make it ‘cool’ and ‘badass’ to show a macho man killing and killing to get what he wants–in this case, seventy grand. Then, we make it hip to use racial slurs, as Tarantino did, and as we hear Val doing, calling the Chinese mafia “chows” and “fuckin’ slants!” All we need is for economic times to be hard–symbolically expressed in scruffy, penniless Porter itching to get his $70,000 at the film’s beginning–while one never challenges the capitalist system that caused these problems, of course, and the stage is set for fascist violence to come in.

After ripping off the homeless guy, Porter surveys the busy sidewalks to find a man who looks similar enough to him for a photo ID he can fake as being of himself. He finds a suitable guy, bumps into him and apologizes, brushing his suit to distract him while pickpocketing his wallet. As we can see, the theatrical release glamourizes a thief and killer, ruthlessly stopping at nothing to get ‘his’ money, whereas the director’s cut presents him as such not to make him seem ‘cool,’ but as an implicit social commentary, a dark one, meant to raise eyebrows.

Just before the wife-beating, Lynn tells Porter that Val has arranged to pay her rent, just as in the novel, Mal does this for her in return for a sexual relationship with her. Resnick has stolen far more than just money from our prickly protagonist.

In the film, a far better motive is given to Lynn to double-cross and kill Porter than is given in the novel: she thinks he has been having an affair with Rosie (which he claims happened before he met Lynn). In the novel, Mal threatens to kill her if she doesn’t shoot Parker…because he’s too much of a coward to do his dirty work himself.

Val, even more overtly violent than Porter, enjoys beating women–prostitutes in particular, suggesting a…shall we say, Joy Division mentality about them?–and has a racist attitude, at least towards Asians. His favorite prostitute is the S-and-M-leaning Pearl (Liu), who is linked with the Chinese mafia, and with whom he trades punches. One is reminded of Freud‘s comment: “A sadist is always at the same time a masochist.” Val utterly personifies fascism.

As I mentioned above, he stole Porter’s cut to buy his way back into The Outfit, which as I also mentioned above, represents capitalism in its more presentable form. There are different levels of viciousness in capitalism. When economic times are good, capitalism can pretend to be democratic; when they’re bad, the democratic mask falls off, and the ugly, violent face of fascism shows itself.

Val represents the kind of fascist who wants to hide in, and get the benefits of, capitalism’s respectability in the form of The Outfit. Porter, however, represents the kind of fascist who sees through the phony masquerade of The Outfit and the capitalism it represents, so he’d rather work outside of it, even butting heads with it, if necessary.

A middle-man between Val and Lynn’s seller of drugs is Arthur Stegman (Paymer), who also owns a taxicab operation (in the novel, the Rockaway Car Rental). As with the ‘legitimacy’ of The Outfit, Stegman’s cab business is the respectable one he, as a dealer of drugs like the heroin Lynn has ODed on, hides behind (in the novel, she kills herself by ODing on sleeping pills).

The point I’m trying to make–about the outer mask of respectability we have in capitalism (The Outfit, Stegman’s cab company) vs. the naked aggression of fascism as personified in Porter and Val–is that we shouldn’t have any illusions about the former as being somehow contrasted against the latter. To many of you readers, the point may be too obvious to need to be said; but remember that, as of my writing of this article, millions of Americans are voting for Harris or Trump, fully believing that who they’re voting for are acting in their interests.

Recall that quote by Frank Zappa–who was no supporter of socialism, yet nonetheless had no illusions about the American political and economic system he lived in–about how the illusion of freedom will last only as long as it remains profitable to do so. Once that illusion is too expensive to maintain (as it has been for several decades now), it will be removed, and we will see the naked reality of our hierarchical system based on money and power, and given expression in the form of fascism.

When the comfortable life of liberals is safe and intact, they can pretend to be magnanimous and gracious. When their class privileges are in any way threatened, though, they show their true, violent colours. Val, in the comfort and discreetness of his Outfit hotel room, can hide his sadism with Pearl. When he’s been told by Stegman at a restaurant that Porter is alive and well and presumably wants to kill Val, he shows how nasty he’s capable of being right out in public, right out in the open.

He’s speaking out loud at his table, with no regard for the other patrons. He speaks of having Porter killed for sure, again, loud enough for everyone to hear and not caring at all about it. He even threatens another customer, walking right up to his table, for merely looking at him.

When Val goes to see Carter (Devane), a superior to him in The Outfit, he’s all deferential, because of course he has to be. He’s hoping for help from Carter, but now that Carter’s class interests are also being compromised (as are those of The Outfit in general) by Porter’s visit to Val’s room the night before, Carter not only won’t help Val at all with doing away with Porter, he also wants Val to move out of the hotel, not coming back until he’s removed Porter all by himself (the same thing happens to Mal in the novel). The liberal in Carter has shown his true colours, too. There is to be no more “unpleasantness” from Porter at the hotel.

In the director’s cut, Val is standing outside The Outfit building, angry about having been cut loose from them. He shouts that to do something right, one must do it oneself; then, facing and gesturing to the two US flags by the front doors of the building, he shouts, “It’s the American way!”

Once again, this moment seems to demonstrate Helgeland’s original intentions for Payback, the implied critique of capitalism. When you’re in a bad situation as Val is, those in power won’t help you. You have to deal with the problem yourself–no government handouts, for that would be ‘vile socialism.’ Val is so brainwashed by American capitalist ideology, though, that he won’t even admit that the system is screwing him, knowing full well how screwed by it he is.

After all, it’s the American way. Long live the free market!

He has a racist attitude towards the Chinese (and presumably by extension, towards Asians in general), but this doesn’t mean he won’t enlist their help in killing Porter for him. It’s just as when the Nazis, though regarding the Japanese as racially inferior to them, nonetheless were content to have them in the Axis to keep the Americans occupied during WWII. Politics makes strange bedfellows, and Val has to make do with what little he has.

Though he helped Porter rip off the Chinese mafia, he’s enough of a snake to blame the entire robbery on Porter in order to motivate them to kill him and have their satisfaction in him alone. Unfortunately for Val, though, those two cops intervene just in time to scare the Chinese mafia away.

Now, Detectives Leary and Hicks are thoroughly corrupt, willing to be bought off by Stegman for selling heroin, as well as to save Porter from being charged with the killing of Lynn, etc. (i.e., by having Porter give them the $70,000); but that doesn’t mean they’ll let Val and the Chinese mafia finish off Porter after running into him with their car.

You see, Leary and Hicks represent the kind of capitalism in which the government intervenes, as opposed to the theoretical ‘free market’ capitalism as represented in the lawless Chinese mafia and The Outfit. Just as these two cops will extort money from Porter or Stegman, the state will gladly take cash gifts from capitalists, be they liberal, moderately conservative, or fascist in ideology, in exchange for government protection. Only right-wing libertarians and their extreme, deluded version–‘anarcho’- capitalists–entertain the fantasy that the state and the market are mutually exclusive, and that an unholy alliance between the two cannot be ‘true’ capitalism, but is ‘corporatism’ instead.

Leary and Hicks are a rewrite of cops in the novel who, investigating a shop-owner named Delgardo for moving marijuana from Canada into the States, suspect that Parker is in on the drug-dealing, too (Part III, Chapter 1). In the, to be frank, rather anti-climactic ending of the novel, Parker manages to get his money with minimal difficulty, as opposed to the bloody injuries Porter sustains in both the theatrical release and the director’s cut.

The cops in the novel, however, being incorruptible types compared to Leary and Hicks, finger Porter for helping Delgardo to move the marijuana into the country (Part IV, Chapter 4), and while he manages to get away from the cops, he flees with the wrong baggage, one with clothes rather than the one with the money. The novel ends with him, having enlisted the aid of three men, ripping off The Outfit again, but for a smaller sum of money.

While Parker kicks the asses of the cops in order to escape them in the novel, in the film, Porter plans to frame Hicks and Leary for his killing of Val; he does so by stealing Hicks’s badge, tricking Leary into getting his fingerprints all over the pistol he’s used to put a bullet in Val’s head, and putting Hicks’s badge in the hand of Val’s corpse.

In the novel, Parker needs Rose only to get an address so he can find Mal. In the film, Porter does more than that with her: he revives a relationship with Rosie, now that Lynn is dead. When killing Val, after learning that he needs to contact Carter and Fairfax (Coburn) about getting his money, he saves her from a brutal rape in her apartment. (In the director’s cut, he arrives too late, unfortunately, to stop Val from shooting and killing her dog.)

When Porter goes to Carter’s office, we come to the greatest divergence between the theatrical release and the director’s cut: the identity of the film’s central villain–respectively, Mr. Bronson (Kristofferson) and Ms. Bronson (Kellerman, in voice-over). Since we only hear her voice and never see her, this lends her a fascinating aura of mystery: she’s like a vengeful mother goddess after Porter has shot Carter.

Though I tend to prefer the soundtrack of the theatrical release, with the five-note, chromatic sax ostinato of its main title, I must say that I prefer the darker, more ambiguous ending of Helgeland’s version to the crowd-pleasing, raised-stakes version with Kristofferson, as superficially thrilling as it is. Hence, I’ll deal with the director’s cut ending.

Having not only a woman as the head of the mafia Outfit, but also a woman who surprises and shoots Porter at the train station, the director’s cut ending defies the stereotype of the ‘innocent woman’ vs. the necessarily male villain. This ending, though closer to the novel version (i.e., the payoff happens at a subway station–Part IV, towards the end of Chapter 3), also improves on its disappointingly anti-climactic denouement.

Helgeland’s ending can also be seen to reflect the relationship between fascism (as personified in cold-blooded killer Porter and sadistic Val) and the mainstream imperial ruling class (The Outfit). As Carter has observed, the sadism of Val “comes in handy,” but anyone…anyone…who causes trouble for The Outfit must be removed–either kicked out of the hotel (Val), or killed (Porter).

Similarly, the ruling class has always found fascists to be useful in beating the working class into submission; hence, for example, when Hitler was allowed to take the Sudetenland and encouraged to go east and invade the USSR. When he and Mussolini started to move in on such territory as that of the British Empire, though, they were making themselves into troublemakers of a sort that Porter could be seen to represent, with his fascist-like bent towards violence.

Hence, the violent, he-who-lives-by-the-bullet-shall…die?…by-the-bullet, fate of Porter is comparable to the crushing defeat of Hitler and Mussolini by the end of WWII. The two dictators died…as Porter just might die…but their fascist legacy lived on, through Operations Paperclip and NATO-backed Gladio, Western support of Ukrainian Nazi sympathizers to this day, etc.–as Porter just might survive.