The good news is that Paydirt director Christian Sesma wrote a part for Val Kilmer. The bad news is that the role that Sesma wrote for Kilmer is a speaking part. According to Screen Rant, “In Paydirt, Kilmer’s voice is dubbed by actor Jesse Corti and his character wears a chic scarf to hide the actor’s tracheostomy tube. The result is surprisingly seamless and downright inspirational for actors with disabilities hoping to land roles in Hollywood.”
I would be more concerned with aspiration than inspiration; if a retarded (by which mean ‘belated,’ and also ‘really fucking stupid’) Snatch knock-off is the best that a disabled actor can aspire to, then they’d be better off playing disabled characters in good movies. Moreover, the result is only “seamless” if you’ve never had the pleasure of hearing Kilmer talk (“I’m your huckleberry” still gives me goosebumps); for the rest of us, the result is only slightly better than a Hong Kong Dub.
Another issue is that Kilmer’s character exists in a near-vacuum, all but completely isolated from the plot (such as it is), his relationship to the people and events in the story merely tangential; his scenes, which seem to belong in some other film, could have easily been cut out were it not that the script needs him to play deus ex machina during the climax.
Paydirt is ostensibly a heist movie; more specifically, the kind wherein several of the main characters get a quick freeze frame and a caption with their nicknames. Now, the characters’ nicknames in Snatch (from which Sesma has directly lifted this stylistic device) were disarming in their simplicity (“Why do they call him The Bullet-Dodger?;” “Because he dodges bullets,” and so on).
In Paydirt, though, they are insipidly generic — thus, we have “The Brit”, “The Babe”, “The Badass”, “The Brain”, “The Brawn”, and “The Don.” Wait, “The Don”? Really? What’s wrong with “The Boss”? If you must do this (and must you really, though?), at least be consistent and have all the nicknames start with the letter B.
“A perfect heist takes time,” says The Brit (Luke Goss); no wonder this film only runs 80 minutes. The Brit’s plan may not be perfect, but it certainly is awfully convenient (as the best laid plans of Thieves with Hearts of Gold usually are); even getting kidnapped by a vicious Mexican cartel is part of the scheme (I won’t reveal anything else; not because it would be a spoiler, but rather because the premise is so half-baked that it defies description).
Perhaps that’s why The Brit doesn’t find it at all suspicious that his parole officer, who turns out to be the daughter of the Mexican drug lord that he doublecrossed five years ago, literally wears a shirt that says “State of California Parole” (that’s it; not “State of California Parole Office” or even “State of California Parole Department,” just “State of California Parole”), and tags along to all his job interviews.
Make no mistake; quality-wise, this is a terrible movie. There is, however, some good in it; Kilmer depends, much more than such washed-up former stars as Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Mel Gibson, John Travolta, or John Malkovich (the list goes on), on the kindness of strangers. Paydirt is no Top Gun: Maverick in that it provides Kilmer with neither a memorable moment nor a fat paycheck, but it sure as hell is better than nothing.
90% of Everything is Crap 