Payback

The beautiful cinematography suffers from chlorosis, otherwise you might have noticed Helgeland’s magnificent study of films noirs from Dark Passage to The Big Sleep, you film critic.

The beauty of the form is the surrealistic transference after the betrayal, the world slides by like a dream, its unknown quantity has to be worked out logically, step by step (it’s a remake of Point Blank).

Chinese gangsters are hit by two thugs, A’s drug-ridden wife betrays him with B and shoots him. B has a Chinese mistress now, the wife is another person in the past, a call girl.

The loot goes to the outfit, A wants his share. The outfit wants to keep it, the Chinese want it back. Up the rungs of corporate mobdom goes A for his fiscally insignificant sum.

The Order

Helgeland depicts a Third Age of “sin-eating” in or rather outside the Church. And amid his roundly criticized labors dominated by the lighting director and CGI but filmed in Rome, is a performance by Peter Weller that justifies them.