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Review of Payback

Payback (II) (1990)
3/10
Payback can be a bitch
7 August 2006
Warning: Spoilers
One of a number of films with the same title and this one is probably one of the poorest. I always worry when the lead character and starring role in a film is also written by the same person. Now, this can be a good thing in some cases but more often than not, it just turns into a vanity project and this is one of the latter.

Our so-called hero escapes from a prison work gang in one of the most poorly conceived plans ever made, i.e. he just runs and hopes for the best. Not exactly up there with 'Escape from Alcatraz.'

Taking a job at a gas station in a small town, he takes up with a local girl and upsets the town bully, a subplot that gets rapidly pushed onto the back burner when the film lurches into the final reel.

Doing a deal with the local sheriff (played engagingly by Michael Ironside in a sympathetic role for a change), he finds the drug haul from a plane crash he was flying with his late brother. And finally brings his brother's killer to justice....well...the sheriff shoots him actually...

Not one of the most original stories ever filmed and it bogs down very much in the middle with the small town action, which consists of him going out with aforementioned girl and some low grade love scenes.

What I don't like about this film is that the supposed hero is in reality a drug-runner, who only wants revenge for the death of his brother, not to stop the evil he was part of. He even gets off scott-free when the sheriff lets him leave before the feds arrive. Only for him to rendezvous with the girl (who also happens to be the sheriff's daughter, talk about taking the pee!), so, they can run off to the big city lights.

So, the moral is: it's OK to be a drug runner if you are pretty and your brother has been murdered by your sleaze bag employer.

Apart from been a mediocre film, that leaves a unpleasant taste in my mouth.
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