Touchstone Pictures, Rated R
Directed by Brian Helgeland
Written by Brian Helgeland and Terry Hayes based on the novel by Donald E. Westlake

Root for the bad guy. As if that were a new thing. Remember Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather? Been there, done that. So what else does this movie have going for it? Well, there's Mel Gibson. And that's about it.
Payback is about a criminal named Porter and how he gets revenge on his enemies. No honor among thieves here. The procedures are uninteresting, insulting and many scenes border on sadistic. I just cannot believe Brian Helgeland, co-writer of L.A. Confidential directed this movie and wrote most of the script. He bailed out of the movie at the last minute but he should have never been involved in the first place.
Gibson tries his best to be his usual charming self but basically fails. We are given absolutely no reason to identify with his character. He's a criminal and there is very little about him that's likable. But the fact that Mel Gibson plays him should be enough, the producers seem to think.
The violence is excruciating and overdone. It is similar in some ways to L.A. Confidential, but because we cared about those characters and because there was usually a motivation behind the violence, it fit into the film. Here it's violence completely for the sake of violence. Audiences have become numb to this and not since Con-Air has this fact been quite as obvious. A Clockwork Orange didn't have this many severe beatings. Not to mention shootings and the loss of small appendages. It gets tiresome well before the hour mark but just gets worse as the film progresses to a somewhat anticlimactic gimmicky ending.
The only thing that saved this movie from being * or even 1/2* was the performance of "Ally McBeal's" Lucy Liu. She took what could have been a thankless window-dressing role and stole every scene effortlessly. Her dialogue and motivations at times were completely vapid or nonexistent, but she did the very best that she could with what she had and then some. Now we know it's not just her character on "Ally" that makes her such a joy to watch. Liu has immense comedic talent. But all the talent in the world still couldn't save this pointless exercise. * 1/2