10 Movies That Were Massively Improved By A Director's Cut

5. Payback (1999)

Payback Mel Gibson
Paramount Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures

Brian Helgeland's debut feature sees Mel Gibson in his comfort zone playing a wisecracking loose cannon out for revenge, in what is a standard and overly-predictable thriller. However, the movie that hit theaters was not what the director had in mind and the release of the fifteen minutes shorter Director's Cut billed as Payback: Straight Up showcases a different, and ultimately much-improved, violent modern noir.

Helgeland was removed from the project after the studio found his version too dark and uncompromising, which led to an entirely different third act being shot, the addition of a voice-over from Gibson's Porter and the casting of Kris Kristofferson as a character that wasn't even in the initial cut of the movie.

Payback: Straight Up removes these elements, trims down the subplots and makes the lead character much less sympathetic to create something completely different; a stripped-down, gritty and morally ambiguous tale that elevates Payback from a standard Mel Gibson vehicle to a thematically complex and hard-edged crime flick.

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