Mel Gibson in an urban crime syndicate double-cross flick. This was a cool movie with a great cast. Mel plays Porter the punching bag out to collect his $130,000^$70,000, working his way up the food chain to get it, all while the police and other parties are trying to get their cut of his money. Porter takes a fair amount of abuse, but Max/Riggs/Fatman is a tough guy and can handle it. Maria Bello plays the love interest, and I've always liked her.

Gregg Henry is here too, and I always liked him, ever since Just Before Dawn. A sleazeball here, but amusing. Then you have Freddy Rodriguez, Bill Duke, William Devane, Kris Kristofferson, and Lucy Liu. And they all want to kill Porter.

It's sort of a revenge movie, but it's motivated more by getting even. Financially. There's definitely a lot of great crime tropes here, like the crooked cop, the blackmail, the extortion, and all those wonderful bad things we all love so much.

I think visually, they drained the colors for their urban aesthetic. A bit distracting at first, but I didn't notice it so much after a while.
There are some really fun scenes in this movie, and I'm wondering why I didn't care for it on my first viewing some 15 years ago. My younger self was an embarrassment, because this movie is great. I give it 5 stars! Out of 7.