Video Reviews: 'Payback' and 'Point Blank'

The antihero's name is now Porter (Why? Because Gibson carries the film?), but otherwise it's the same setup. The double-crosser is played by Gregg Henry as a giggling sadist (think early Richard Widmark on poppers) and his Asian S&M-queen girlfriend — a new character, needless to say — is given a lubricious spin by Ally McBeal's Lucy Liu. William Devane, James Coburn, and Kris Kristofferson enjoy themselves immoderately as crime bosses, and Maria Bello (ER) brings a measure of warmth to the old Angie Dickinson role. And Mel? Oddly, he doesn't seem quite comfortable playing a killer with a frozen soul. His eyes keep doing funny things, as if he's signaling that he's not really like this. He's winking.

Lee Marvin never winks. In fact, he never even seems to blink, which makes sense for a dead guy. Gibson, on the other hand, has always been a live wire, and you can feel his native raffishness fighting against this role. Or perhaps he was just experiencing behind-the-scenes jitters: Reportedly, poor test screenings led to director Helgeland leaving the project and Gibson overseeing rewrites and reshoots of Payback's entire third act (allegedly leaving an aural cameo by Angie Dickinson on the cutting-room floor). The result is that Porter becomes much more sympathetic in the film's second half — especially in his relationship with Bello's Rosie — but if that's really what the filmmakers wanted when they set out, why bother to make the movie at all? At the conclusion of Point Blank, Marvin fades into the darkness like a satiated ghost; Payback, instead, ends with Gibson telling Bello to ''just drive, baby.'' Then they skedaddle out of the slums, heading safely back toward Hollywood. Payback: C Point Blank: A-