Revenge is a dish best served cold. Unless you’re watching Payback (1995), in which case it’s overcooked, underseasoned, and dropped on the floor before anyone had a chance to care.
This cinematic faceplant stars C. Thomas Howell as Oscar Bonsetter, a man whose name sounds like a minor league baseball coach and whose personality matches. Oscar promises a dying cellmate that he’ll avenge his murder at the hands of a sadistic prison guard. In exchange, Oscar gets directions to a mythical stash of cash. Sounds like the setup to a gritty, blood-soaked noir, right?
Wrong. What we get instead is a softcore revenge thriller with the dramatic intensity of a Pepto-Bismol commercial. Howell, trying his damndest to smolder, lumbers through the film like he’s late to a cologne audition. His big post-prison plan? Walk into town, do some light brooding, and slowly forget why he got out of bed in the first place. This guy couldn’t avenge a parking ticket.
Enter Rose, played by Joan Severance, once again cast as “The Only Thing Holding This Garbage Fire Together.” She’s married to the ex-guard, played by Marshall Bell, who is now blind and bitter—basically a sweaty collection of curses in a wheelchair. You’d think Oscar would be like, “Mission accomplished,” and grab the cash. But no. Instead, he gets hypnotized by Rose, because she’s hot, bored, and built like a perfume ad in a motel shower.
The “tension” builds, if by tension you mean slow motion glances, bad jazz, and scenes that play like the editor passed out on the keyboard. Rose is clearly trouble. Howell is clearly stupid. And the blind husband is clearly not so blind to the fact that his wife is about to start steaming the sheets with a convicted felon. The whole thing smells like an erotic thriller’s sad cousin—the one who shows up drunk to Thanksgiving and still brags about his VHS collection.
And the revenge plot? It fizzles out like a fart in a wind tunnel. The movie spends so much time on half-hearted seduction and unearned emotion that it forgets it’s supposed to be about justice. Or vengeance. Or, hell, anything. Oscar’s internal conflict is played like a man trying to choose between two frozen pizza brands—he’s that torn, that sweaty, and that irrelevant.
Let’s talk about the sex scenes. Yes, they’re here. They always are in this kind of movie. But they’re about as erotic as a tax audit. The camera lingers on every silk sheet, every flickering candle, every agonizingly slow unzipping like it’s afraid to miss the only thing it thinks the audience came for. But there’s no heat. No danger. Just two people who look like they’re trying to remember each other’s names mid-thrust.
The dialogue is a masterclass in clichés and posturing:
“You don’t know what it’s like to rot in a cell.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to rot in this marriage.”
Yes, folks. Revenge, lust, and sorrow—written by someone who once read a Raymond Chandler blurb on the back of a cereal box and said, “I got this.”
Director Anthony Hickox, whose resume is a graveyard of genre misfires, shoots the whole thing like it’s a perfume ad gone rogue. We’ve got blue lighting, slow pans, sweaty closeups, and more mood than meaning. At times, it feels like the movie’s trying to hypnotize you into thinking it’s smarter than it is. It isn’t.
By the time the climax (if you can call it that) limps across the screen, you’re long past caring who lives, who dies, and who ends up with the cash. The film tries to twist, but it barely turns. It’s less a shocking conclusion and more a merciful end to a story that didn’t know where it was going after minute fifteen.
Final Verdict:
Payback wants to be a sexy, violent tale of redemption and revenge. What it is is a lethargic, confused puddle of erotic thriller leftovers, featuring a lead who forgot his motivation and a villain who can’t see the plot, literally or figuratively.
1 out of 5 stars.
One star for Joan Severance, who remains the only thing worth watching, even while trapped in a film that feels like a punishment for skipping jury duty. The rest should be locked up and denied parole.
