Payback

Payback is a 1999 American neo-noir action thriller film written and directed by Brian Helgeland in his directorial debut, and starring Mel Gibson, Gregg Henry, Maria Bello, and David Paymer. It is based on the novel The Hunter by Donald E. Westlake using the pseudonym Richard Stark, which had earlier been adapted into the 1967 film noir classic Point Blank, directed by John Boorman and starring Lee Marvin. In 2006, Helgeland issued a director's cut that differs substantially from the version released by the studio. Plot Porter, a career thief and former U.S. Marine, lies facedown on the kitchen table in the apartment of an unlicensed doctor, after having been shot twice and betrayed for $70,000. As the doctor uses the whiskey he is drinking as a sterilizing agent for his tools, the bullets, and as anesthesia. He then digs out the bullets, stitches up the open wounds, and then Porter begins making his plans to get the money back and take revenge. Broke after five months of recuperating, Porter uses a series of petty thefts and short cons to quickly acquire $1,000 in cash, a new suit, a revolver, and a few meals. He then begins tracking down his estranged wife Lynn and former partner-in-crime Val Resnick. In flashbacks, Porter recalls that they betrayed him following a $140,000 heist from local Chinese Triad. Resnick had manipulated Lynn into helping him with a picture showing Porter with another woman, a high-priced call girl named Rosie, and implying that the two were having an affair. Lynn shoots Porter, then she and Resnick leave Porter for dead. Val used the cash to buy his way back into "the Outfit," a local organized crime syndicate, by paying off his outstanding debt of $130,000 to them.