{"id":33315,"date":"2024-12-05T10:26:28","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T16:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=33315"},"modified":"2024-12-04T19:27:09","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T01:27:09","slug":"movie-report-payback-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/05\/movie-report-payback-1999\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Report: Payback<\/i> (1999)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BookAfter watching Shanghai Noon<\/a><\/em> a couple of weeks ago, I had to go back and watch this movie again to see how many times Lucy Liu said, “Hubba hubba.” Ah, gentle reader, I was mistaken: She says, “Hubba hubba hubba<\/em>” only once, so it was not her preferred phrase, and she was actually only echoing another character who said it more frequently.<\/p>\n

So this is a Parker<\/em> film based on a book by Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake), but he did not want any films to use the name Parker<\/em> when he was alive, so the main character in this film is Porter<\/em>, and he’s a thief who steals from other thieves. The film starts after Porter and an associate, Val (he of the “hubba hubba hubba”), rob a Chinese triad of a payout that Val said was going to be $300,000, but it turns out that Val was lying, and Val wanted the entire $140,000 to buy himself back into a criminal syndicate–and he convinced Porter’s wife to shoot Porter, whom she thought was having an affair with a prostitute. So the film begins with a back-alley doctor removing the bullets from Porter and his vowing to get his share of the money back.<\/p>\n

So Porter returns to the city, commits some petty crimes, and begins climbing the ladder to recover his money. Val has turned it over to “the syndicate,” so Porter has to deal with them as he ascends to the levels where someone can give him his cut of the cash. Meanwhile, a couple of corrupt policemen stand him up and threaten him with arrest or worse if he doesn’t turn the money over to them when he recovers it. And the syndicate, although it has told him that he’s crazy to try to recoup the $130,000 that they think Porter wants–and he corrects them that he only wants his share. The aforementioned Lucy Liu plays a sadomasochistic prostitute whose best customer, maybe, is Val and who is connected to the gang that Val and Porter ripped off–whom Val points at Porter so they can kill him for him.<\/p>\n

At any rate, the whole Parker thing was he had a code that he only stole from bad people, or at least it worked out that way (from what I remember of the books). Aside from a couple of petty crimes at the film’s beginning, that holds true. And he has a soft spot for the prostitute whose picture with Porter spurred the whole movie (taken before he was married, we are told eventually), so that kind of humanizes him. He’s not the worst villain of the lot, for sure.<\/p>\n

So I have enjoyed the movie at least thrice now (in the theaters, when I got the DVD, and just now, but I might have seen it another time or two in the last 25 years). And since we looked at Deborah Kara Unger (who played Porter’s wife briefly) when we talked about Highlander: The Final Dimension<\/a><\/em> and we looked about Lucy Liu when we recently reviewed Shanghai Noon<\/a><\/em>, I guess we should take a look at Maria Bello who plays the prostitute upon whom Porter is sweet.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Again, I’m tempted to say that I saw Bello in a number of things around the turn of the century but not much since, but the only thing I’ve seen since the turn of the century are football games, a couple of television shows, and Marvel movies, basically, so that’s my fault as she has had a steady career. Come to think of it (and research it), I really only saw her in this film back in the day and in a couple of the lad mags I took around that time her film Coyote Ugly<\/em> came out. I’ve seen her more recently in old movies like Assault on Precinct 13<\/em><\/a> (from 2005, but I saw it in 2021) and Grown Ups<\/a><\/em> (from 2010, but I saw it also in 2021, so clearly I am not on a Maria Bello kick).<\/p>\n

At any rate, she has an approachable beauty that is not the caricature that is the standard in media these days.<\/p>\n

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She has aged well and remains lovely. Not that I’ve seen her lately, or will see her again soon–I don’t see anything else on my radar on her IMDB page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After watching Shanghai Noon a couple of weeks ago, I had to go back and watch this movie again to see how many times Lucy Liu said, “Hubba hubba.” Ah, gentle reader, I was mistaken: She says, “Hubba hubba hubba” only once, so it was not her preferred phrase, and she was actually only echoing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33316,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33315\/revisions\/33316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}