Movie Guns XXXV

This has been a long time in the making, but it's here at last.

I picked this movie because it's the currently the only DVD that I had on hand with decent picture quality, and because it's a badass movie. I actually have the director's cut, so the ending is different but still cool.

The film is Payback starring Mel Gibson as Porter: a rundown thief who is trying to get back the money that he stole. Somehow Porter is the 'good guy' of the movie despite him actually being kind of a scumbag.

Originally I thought this would be a short post, but was pleasantly surprised when going through the film that there were more guns than I had planned. The whole thing has a downtrodden and dreary theme to it, like the script came out of some cops-and-robbers comic book (makes sense considering it's a remake of the film Point Blank); I really can't explain it. There is little in the way of high-tech weaponry, as most of the guns are revolvers. Even the cops carry revolvers, which is odd considering that the time period is in the present.

So let's get started.

I'm going to cover a flashback part in the film first since technically it's the first thing that happened. Porter and his partner Val (Greg Henry) steal $140k from some Triads, and after they count the money Porter is betrayed by his wife and Val, and she shoots him in the back with this Colt Python:



Porter survives his wounds, and once he's back on his feet he goes and buys a Smith & Wesson Model 27 from a pawnshop with money he stole from someone's wallet. The pawnbroker hands Porter the gun with the hammer back and his finger in the trigger guard:



That would have instantly ended the sale if it were me interested in that gun.

Porter goes to his wife's apartment, and when he comes smashing into the room he does a Hollywood type room clearance:

Wandering around with your finger inside the triggerguard of a cocked handgun while it's next to your face is about the most dangerous thing you can do with it outside of just putting it to your head and pulling the trigger.

The next morning a lowlife drug dealer comes by the apartment to sell Porter's wife some heroine. Porter beats the guy down and takes his S&W Model 6906 from him:


The drug dealer gives Porter the source of the heroine, and when Porter goes there to check it out he comes across two dirty police detectives; one of which has this unknown revolver in a crossdraw holster:


Moving on, Porter finally catches up to Val at his apartment where he is enjoying a sadist moment with a hooker. A most interesting scene that defies explaination. Here Porter is threatening Val with the S&W 27 and telling him to get the money:


Val used the money he stole from Porter to buy his way into an organized crime syndicate called the Outfit. He goes to see his boss to let him know about his problem with Porter, but before he goes into the office he gets searched for weapons which turns up a Beretta 92, a Walther PPK, and a S&W Model 49 Bodyguard that he had in an ankle holster, respectively:

Val decides to handle the situation on his own, so he tells the Triads that is was Porter who stole their money (leaving out the part about his own involvement), and the Triads catch Porter in an alleyway. While they hold Porter down on the hood of a car, one of them pulls a balisong and flips it open:

I don't know who makes it, but the guy looks like he knows how to handle judging by his flipping skills.

The two dirty cops from earlier are looking to take Porter's money once he gets it back, and they show up just in time to stop him from getting castrated with the balisong, but then they beat on him to make their point about who the money is going to. Little do they know that Porter swipes one of their badges during the beating, which comes in handy a little later:

Porter found the location of Val through a call girl, Rosie (Maria Bello), that he used to protect, and Val figures this out and goes to pay her a visit. When she answers the door, Val is holding his Beretta 92 in the absurd gangster grip that gun guys love to mock:

When she leads Val into the bedroom, her big ass dog (named Porter) does what it's supposed to do and protect his master. He jumps on Val and bites at his neck. . . .

Which buys Rosie enough time to get to her weapon:

A baseball bat?!?! I guess whores aren't permitted to own effective personal protection in this movie.

Val shoots the dog and takes the bat away from Rosie, but the human Porter walks in and shoots him with his Model 27 before he can do Rosie further harm:

After a quick chat, Porter uses a pillow to silence the execution shot on Val:

I don't know how effective that would be in real life, especially considering it totally muffles the shot from that .357 magnum. No mention of what happens to the round when it passes through the floor into the apartment below!

Now Porter goes to see Val's boss to get his money. The dirty cops are waiting for him before he goes into the building, and Porter hands them his Model 27 to hold because he knows that he will be searched. Inside the Outfit bosses office, he uses a roll of pennies to knock out the two guards, and he takes their weapons; one of which is a H&K P7M8:

I'll leave the details out of the rest of that altercation in the name of not spoiling the entire movie, but Porter goes back outside and gets his gun back from the two cops. The cop that has the gun opens the cylinder and dumps out all of the rounds before he hands it back, and Porter grabs it with an open newspaper that not only conceals it, but keeps his fingerprints off of it. He goes back to Rosie's apartment and drops the gun, which now has the cops fingerprints on it, next to Val's body, and then places the stolen badge from earlier in Val's hand:

That's a pretty slick way of getting two dirty cops off your back!

Porter goes to the residence of another Outfit boss and shows that he is not immune to the gangster grip:

Getting near the end now, Porter catches a cab, but instead of it being a real cabbie it ends up being the low level drug dealer and his bodyguard. He wants to take Porter to the Outfit for a reward, so he holds him at gunpoint with another S&W Model 27 which is promptly taken away:

The bodyguard stops the cab and pulls a sawed off Remington 870 which is unloaded considering he has to rack a shell into the chamber to emphasize the danger:

That someone has to rack the slide on film to show that the damn gun is loaded is so stupid. Almost all gun owning Americans either own a pump shotgun or are intimately familiar with them, so you would think that the movie industry would go for realism sometime instead of going for the cliche' "you must pump the gun to show the audience that it's loaded" move. The next movie that I see that does this will immediately get turned off. Not to be nitpicky, but learn how the thing works! That goes for 1911s too! You listening Hollywood?

Now, back to the movie.

While Porter and the two idiots are having a Mexican standoff in the cab (no offense to Mexicans), the Triads pull up next to them and hang out the windows with, from left to right: a Walther P5, a M3 Greasegun, a GLOCK 17, and another M3 Greasegun:

Porter uses the drug dealer as a human shield and manages to escape out the other end of the cab. He kills a couple of the Triads from the back of their SUV, and then when the driver backs over him he starts to shoot through the bottom of the truck. I lost count of the number of shots fired from the Model 27, but he is also firing a Beretta 92.

The Hooker from earlier (Lucy Liu) is firing down through the floor at Porter with a pearl gripped Walther PPK:

The driver steps out with a Sig P228 but gets blasted for his troubles:

The hooker and Porter, as the only survivers, have another standoff which sees both of them as having empty weapons.

This is where the director's cut differs from the original movie. Porter has the Outfit deliver his money in a book bag at the train station. The place is crawling with Outfit henchmen, and Porter finds them one-by-one and takes them out. Two of them in the restroom are carrying GLOCK 17s, and Porter is seen here dumping them in the trash after killing their owners:

Another henchman had a supressed Ruger Mk II hidden in his lunchbox:

There is a brief shootout at the end, but I couldn't get any good shots, so I'll leave it for your viewing enjoyment.

This is a strange movie in that it has you rooting for the bad guy who is working against other bad guys. Even the good guys are bad. It definitely fits its title, and I love the tough use of revolvers throughout. The gun handling could have been better, but the overall use of them was entertaining.

I've had some requests for Movie Guns lately, but have yet to find any of the requested movies in stores. Just know that I am looking, and will get to them sooner or later.

P.S. I've noticed that since I started paying for a Photobucket account the frames in my Movie Guns posts don't have the caption and aren't clickable. If anyone has any idea of how to fix that please let me know.