10 Great Movies Ruined Entirely By Last Minute Changes

By Percival Constantine /

7. Payback

Payback was a 1999 film starring Mel Gibson as Porter, a career criminal who, after pulling a job, is betrayed and then shot by his partner and his wife. They leave him for dead and make off with his money, but he survives and embarks on a revenge quest that sets him up against corrupt cops and a criminal syndicate. It€™s based off the beginning of Donald Westlate€™s novel The Hunter, which introduced the popular Parker character (renamed Porter for this one and Walker in the 1967 adaptation, Point Blank). Brian Helgeland€™s original version of Payback was considered too dark and unappealing to audiences, and it€™s easy to see why. In Helgeland€™s cut, Porter is much more violent and abusive and the movie has a very ambiguous ending with Porter near-death. The studio wanted Porter to be more accessible, so Terry Hayes was hired to do a rewrite and Helgeland was replaced by production designer John Myhre, who reshot 30% of the film. The result is that Payback became less of a violent noir thriller and more of a black comedy. 2006 saw the release of Payback: Straight Up - The Director€™s Cut on DVD. This is Helgeland€™s original cut of the film and while for the most part it€™s the same, the latter portion is completely different. The theatrical cut features the syndicate leader, Bronson, played by Kris Kristofferson. To get his money back, Porter kidnaps Bronson€™s teenage son for ransom. But in the director€™s cut, Bronson is actually a woman and she never appears onscreen, only her voice is heard over the phone (courtesy of Sally Kellerman). Bronson€™s son also has no role in this version and a hard-to-watch scene of Porter beating his wife also appears. Unlike the others on this list, the theatrical cut of Payback isn€™t necessarily a ruined film. Both are pretty entertaining to watch, and it€™s interesting to see how the same basis led in two very different directions.