Payback

Gangster prétentieux et têtu, Mel Gibson, une jolie blonde qui compte pour lui, un couple de policiers stupides et corrompus, beaucoup de violence, quelques éléments de sado/maso et surtout une douzaine de voyous dont la "coolitude" augmente à mesure qu'ils apprennent à les connaître, du pire voyou au plus dur et impitoyable boss. Le tout emballé dans des filtres nostalgiques, des nuances de caméra gris-bleu et un humour diablement noir. Un plaisir gourmand ! (10/08/2002)

Finie la plaisanterie. Un film néo-noir grandiloquent dont la distribution est mémorable et pertinente et le dénouement impeccablement élaboré (un rare cas où l’intervention du studio influence le film positivement, ce que je peux dire après avoir vu la version du réalisateur Payback: Straight Up qui, elle, me semblait malheureusement plus faible…). Je ne me lasserai jamais de le revoir ! C’est l’un de ces films que l’on a toujours envie de se repasser. Cinq étoiles ! (25/04/2018)

Mel Gibson did a hell of a job in this one. He’s tough, cool, rough, his mouth is full of great lines and he’s about to finish what he’d started. This is one hell of a payback. It actually doesn’t matter how Mel is going to go about is, what’s important is that he shoots enough bullets and that there are tons of dead bodies around him. It’s as simple as that. It might be a bit of a wannabe cool over-filtered action ride, but other than that it’s a wacky movie in the vein of Tarantino, which will keep you entertained for those almost two hours. (28/02/2014)

The brutality suits the noir-themed crime stories well. On the journey for revenge, Gibson, as a tough guy with a steel gaze, loves a beautiful prostitute, seeks out a traitor, and encounters - uh - a sadistic dominatrix leading an Asian gang. I can't remember the last time I used that word, but Payback is a cool movie, with a perfect cold look, and some scenes are amazingly uncompromising in their brutality, but unfortunately, everything is always just tough, and throughout the whole time, I didn't experience any significant twist that would have affected me in any way. Helgeland relies on stylish form, but the essence constantly eludes him. (11/06/2007)

Helgeland managed a fairly decent mix of the gritty dude, Lethal Weapon, and the Tarantino crude gangster poetics, in which brutality is sort of danced, humorous, casual. Payback is no directorial opus magni - it is a rather routine film, which owes most of its great moments to the script and to the excellent Mel Gibson, who capitalized on his many years of experience in detective Riggs' skin, only to stand on the opposite side of the barricade. Thanks to him the incredibly stubborn thief Porter becomes a character almost humorously dangerous, who, with raw willfulness, walks through the reinforced concrete barricade for the smallest thing. The central character is the central value of Payback. We otherwise do not find anything particularly original or memorable here, everything works for the benefit of the whole and the result is a quality gangster film from the rough school that delights even with its decent ending. (29/11/2005)