Today's audiences have reached unprecedented levels of what they will allow themselves to be disgusted by. There aren't big enough sledgehammers or enough joints in the human body waiting to be smashed to cause us to turn in revulsion from the big screen. The new Paramount release, Payback, starring Mel Gibson, has tapped into this newfound tolerance in a profoundly adept way. My guess is that the movie will do well at the box office not in spite of the gore, but because of our appetite for it.

Director Brian Helgeland, who co-wrote the screenplay with Terry Hayes, has tapped into the nineties' ultra-cynical mentality and melded it with the tough-guy film-noir style of the forties. The world he creates for us in Payback is a bleak one indeed. Just about every last character is an incurable sadist, junkie or whore. The closest thing to a love scene that surfaces is a round or two of S&M delivered with a bit of camp by Lucy Alexis Liu, as Pearl.

The film's protagonist, Porter (played by Gibson), is a bad guy in every sense of the word. The roster of crimes he commits during the proceedings includes homicide, armed robbery, assault and battery, credit card fraud, kidnapping and reckless driving. (This last entry warrants inclusion if for no other reason than it causes a head-on collision and adds a few more bodies to the pile that accumulates steadily in the movie.)

So how are we persuaded to gravitate to Porter's side? Well, folks, everything's relative (a wise man once said). Surround a bad man with a group of other villains who are exponentially more pathological and he suddenly becomes something of a hero. Add to the mix that he's quite the kindly gent to the women-folk and you have yourself a virtual knight in only slightly tarnished armor.

I've now reached the point in the article where the journalist typically provides a detailed synopsis of the film's plot thereby ruining the movie for every poor soul unfortunate enough to be reading the review. I'll spare you this disservice, although I must, at minimum, tell you this: Payback is basically a story of retribution in which a small-time hood (Porter) spends the bulk of his time seeking revenge from having been double-crossed by his former accomplice (Val Resnick played by Gregg Henry). The fact that Porter subjects himself to a wide gamut of gruesome and painful experiences to recover a relatively small amount of money (70 grand), can only mean one thing – the filmmaker is trying to make some kind of point. Perhaps he's trying to say that crime is inherently senseless no matter how much monetary gain is associated with it, be it 70 thousand or 70 million dollars. Or perhaps he's just trying to endear us to the character. Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

We're now at the point of the review in which the journalist takes the opposite view from what he's previously said, therefore proving that he's objective, well trained and extremely indecisive. Along these lines, I should mention that there were many aspects of Payback that I found to be quite good. For one thing, the manner in which technology is employed is subtle and effective. Through digital trickery the movie's backdrop becomes a city of anonymity, a virtual metropolis of nowhere. On the audio side, Gibson's voice is compressed at key moments, giving the Sam Spade-like monologue he delivers throughout the movie a haunting and melodramatic quality.

In addition, I enjoyed the retro tone of the movie, augmented by sparse, punchy dialogue and the aforementioned voiceovers. Also worthy of mention was Payback's depiction of The Mob (known in the movie as The Outfit) as a typical corporate entity, making a not so subtle comment on today's business climate.

On the upside, Payback is fast-paced, suspenseful, clever and easily distinguishable from your run-of-the-mill crime fiction. It takes a few chances and at least aspires to show us something we haven't seen a million times before. Put simply, the movie is a modern-day caper with a dark, dark edge. It is extremely violent, but what isn't these days.