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.

Test screenings did not go well. And Mel Gibson, who was also the producer of the film, had Helgeland removed from his own debut. Helgeland’s position was that he only wanted to rework the ending. Gibson’s position was that the entire third act needed rewriting, and Gibson won, because Gibson was signing the cheques.

And here is the part I find genuinely remarkable. Because Gibson was the producer, Directors Guild rules prevented him from simply stepping in and directing the reshoots himself. Somebody else had to be credited with the job. Accounts to this day differ on who that actually was. Some sources name production designer John Myhre. Others point to Paul Abascal. And there is a long-running account from the time that Gibson simply installed his own longtime hairstylist in the role, essentially as a mouthpiece, while running the reshoots himself.

Thirty percent of the film was reshot across ten days. The result included a new opening scene, an added voiceover track from Porter, an entirely new villain, a substantially different third act, and the heavy blue colour grade that defines the theatrical version.

Then, in 2006, Helgeland was finally permitted to go back and reassemble his original film. It premiered at the Austin Film Festival and was released the following year as Payback: Straight Up — The Director’s Cut. It runs ninety minutes rather than a hundred and one. It removes the voiceover entirely, strips out the blue filter in favour of a brighter, higher-contrast look, cuts several characters including Kristofferson’s, replaces the crime boss with a woman voiced by Sally Kellerman, and ends on a completely different and far more ambiguous note. The AV Club described it as a marked improvement on the unrulier original, and most people who have watched both agree.

So if you are going to watch this, check which version you have, because they are genuinely two different films with two different tones and two different endings. The director’s cut is the one on Prime in several regions.

Credit to Gibson, too, because he actively helped get that cut made and released, and sat for interviews in the DVD extras discussing the disagreement openly. That is more grace than most people in that position show.

This is not a great movie. It is not one I would consider rewatching. But it is a fine, gritty shooting movie, and it moves.