Paydirt (2020)

Back in February I had Francis Rizzo III from KilmerKast on to discuss this film, as it was the place where our two podcast worlds intersect: Val Kilmer and DTV movies. Also it was free on Tubi, so easy for both of us to get at. In addition to us, our friend Todd Gaines at Bulletproof action has covered this.

Paydirt has DTV mainstay Luke Goss as the head of a gang of people who stole a bunch of money from a Mexican cartel and hid it away from them. To throw them off the scent, Goss goes down for a petty drug trafficking charge and gets 5 years in the can--put there by Val Kilmer, who ends up leaving his job on the force in disgrace when the bust only turns up the small amount of weed and Goss's arrest. Now Goss is out and the cartel wants their money, Kilmer wants his revenge, and Goss wants to get the gang back together to get the money too. As all these moving parts come together, will Goss and his crew prevail, or will the cartel take them down, or will Kilmer get his revenge? With all of these movies there's a twist, and this one may involve... an Oscar winner?

If you want to watch this without spoilers, don't read any further, because I can't discuss this without giving away what happens. Essentially, the movie tells us that the idea of the MacGuffin--in this case the bag of money Goss buried--is a fun plot device, but not realistic, so instead they never hid the money, they laundered it in a casino run by a character named Leo Cap, played by Oscar winner Nick Vallelonga. What that means is, all the trouble they went through to break into places to get information on the whereabouts of the money, and drawing out the cartels, and stringing Val Kilmer along, was all useless. What that means is, the movie should have ended in the first five minutes when Luke Goss got out of jail, because he had no reason to not just get on a plane with his gang and flee the country. What that means is the jokes on you movie makers, because you think you're so smart pooh poohing the MacGuffin, when in fact you have no movie without it. I feel like this has to be a first at the DTVC: a movie that obviates itself at the end; the only problem is, though it obviates itself, the 90 minutes I lost in watching it can't be brought back. I guess I got a podcast episode and a blog post out of it, so that's something.

Val Kilmer isn't in this much, and there's a sense that the cancer he was dealing with was preventing him from fully being there in the scenes he was in; but we also had a couple scenes with him and his daughter, which were really nice. If anything, the film giving us those nice moments, and allowing Kilmer to have those moments with his daughter, might make the plot twist that obviates the need to have the movie in the first place worth it. Right now Kilmer is kind of blowing up as part of the new Top Gun movie--which as of this writing I haven't seen--and I think seeing him in something like Paydirt makes me want a win like that for him more. I don't want to say he's been largely forgotten, but he's one of the greatest actors of his generation, and while it's fun to see him in DTV stuff--and cool to see him have an opportunity to act opposite his daughter--big screen success is what he's due for his level of talent.

Luke Goss on the other hand exists more in the DTV realm, but here with his native English accent, he's much better. The character he's playing has the potential to go full bro-y, but the English accent pulls us back from the brink and makes him endearing, which we desperately needed. This is his 11th film on the DTVC, but I think other than Tekken this is the only one where he speaks with his English accent. In a way it's a funny coincidence that I say his American accent makes him sound "bro-y," because he was in a band with his brother called Bros. Anyway, the question is, how high can his tag count get here at the DTVC, considering how many films he's done? The problem is, I generally don't do a Goss film unless someone else who's bigger is in it too. Kilmer, Michael Jai White, Gary Daniels have all featured in Goss films. One I may check out is Hollow Point, which was directed by Daniel Zirilli, who's someone whose work I like to support.

The heist movie has become easy money in the DTV world of the last 20 years or so. Get a group together, throw in a baddie to manage and a police officer to evade, give us quirky characters, and let them have at it. In a way, this film demonstrates the desperation in the attempts by people making these to try something, anything, to make them less run of the mill. I mean, they did have an interracial lesbian couple, so that's not so run of the mill; but the story is something we've seen so many times, guy who knows where the money is finally gets out of jail and all the players start scrambling to get their hands on it. In that sense, the plot twist that obviates the whole thing, shows us how mundane the whole thing has become, the problem is, this was no meta criticism on the genre, it was almost one that wrote itself into a corner and got stuck with the plot twist it went with. The question is, is this any worse than how one-note Hollywood has gotten? If they're not making reboots or sequels, they're making origin stories with one-name titles. Film in America has gotten safer everywhere, and this is the result. 

Finally, we had another Oscar winner in a DTVC film, and I had no idea until Francis let me know when we were doing the podcast. Nick Vallelonga won two Oscars for Green Book, and yet had this small part as a casino owner in this DTV film. I was trying to think how many Oscar winners we've had on here now. De Niro, Stallone, and Cage first come to mind. We also had Jack Palance and Angelina Jolie in Cyborg III. Ernest Borgnine's been on a couple times as well; plus we did an old Humphrey Bogart film--that wasn't exactly DTV. And then with The Irishman, in addition to De Niro we had Scorsese, Pacino, and Pesce. Out of all the Oscar winners we've had on the site though, the most tagged is Cuba Gooding Jr. with 11.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi. I think it's only for Kilmer completists, because it has that added element of him acting with his daughter. Beyond that, the movie is telling you not to bother--movies about MacGuffins are childish fantasy, right? One you should bother with though is KilmerKast, which is a really fun podcast Francis does that covers the career of Val Kilmer.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11176322

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!