Anyhoo, new Hunter page from Gabe is up:
The Hunter page 7
And the requisite sketch:
Saw an interesting movie this weekend -
Payback: The Director's Cut starring Mel Gibson.
The story behind this is pretty interesting. Brian Helegeland, the writer-director of this one, set out to make a dirty little crime film in the gritty seventies style with an amoral hero and a lot of ambiguity. It would be loosely based on the Richard Stark novel The Hunter. Hey, see what I did there? :) Mel Gibson signed on. They shot the film and the studio was disappointed that it wasn't very much like Lethal Weapon. So they asked for reshoots and a new ending. Helgeland said thanks but no thanks. So Gibson and the studio concocted a new third act and Mel himself took over the direction. The result was an OK middle-of-the-road Mel Gibson action flick. So a few years down the road, Helgeland was given the opportunity to put together a director's cut with his original vision for the film. The result is a much cooler movie. There's an entirely new score in the old school seventies crime vein. The third act and ending are completely different. Even the texture of the film looks different. I really dug it. Plus, there's a cool extra feature about how it all came about. What's interesting is that neither side was really wrong about their needs for the movie. The studio wanted a Mel Gibson film that was gonna draw a wide audience and make a truckload of cash and their version tested far better than Helgeland's original cut. Helgeland readily admits that his vision was a very specific riff on a genre picture aimed at a pretty narrow group of noir and crime-film enthusiasts. I guess the lesson is, don't try and make a small genre film starring Mel Gibson.
At any rate, check out the director's cut if you like your noir dark and your heroes anti. You can pick up the DVD for under 10 bones on Amazon.
Have a good 'un!
1 comment:
Good Movie!
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