Payback

With friends like these, who needs enemies? That's the question bad guy Porter is left asking after his wife and partner steal his heist money and leave him for dead -- or so they think. Five months and an endless reservoir of bitterness later, Porter's partners and the crooked cops on his tail learn how bad payback can be.

Payback landed in mixed territory on release, with critics acknowledging its pulpy nastiness but finding the violence gratuitous and the plotting too mechanical to fully deliver. Gibson's light-footed charisma was singled out as the film's saving grace — the sense being that a less nimble lead would have let the whole cynical exercise collapse.