“Payback” is a movie that should be a lot more fun than it is. I found it to be a film that wanted me to laugh but I found it too bleak to do that.

In “Payback”, Mel Gibson (“Forever Young”, “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome”) stars as an armed robber by the name of Porter. This is a guy that has been shot and left to die by his wife and his best friend (Gregg Henry “Slither”). It is then the violent and depressing tale of how Porter executes his revenge. There’s a scene where he’s beating a worthless drug dealer and it should be funny but the violence is too realistic and another involves a sex dungeon. Again, it should be funny but it comes across as disturbing.

Mel Gibson plays it well but the film itself can’t get the tone right. I laughed during the opening scene where Gibson steals money from a beggar claiming to have been injured in Vietnam, the guy then stands up to get his money back but Gibson informs him he’s been cured and shoves him aside. The rest of the film though doesn’t support Gibson’s performance. The other characters include abusive individuals such as Pearl played by Lucy Liu (“Charlie’s Angels”) but all of them come across as too real. The only other one who works is the one played by James Coburn (“Hudson Hawk”).

“Payback” is a film where the colour has been tweaked with so it looks dull and ugly and that maybe one of the key reasons why this film doesn’t work. The film is done with slickness and it has the right amount of action but it takes the wrong route when getting from point A to point B. Gibson has done action films before and they’ve worked but “Payback” is an occasion when it doesn’t work.