Build a movie plot around this: What does the doctor use to sterilize Porter's back? Whiskey
In a filthy kitchen of an underground abortionist, an unkempt former medical doctor puts on surgical gloves and quickly downs a full glass of cheap whiskey. Face down on the kitchen table is a barely conscious Porter (Mel Gibson), severely wounded with two large bullet wounds in his back. The doctor pours whiskey on Porter's back to sterilize the area and digs out the bullets. Porter spends five months recuperating. Porter narrates that he had $70,000 taken from him and that is what he was going to get back.Porter begins tracking down gangster Val Resnick (Gregg Henry), his violent former partner, and Lynn (Deborah Unger), his estranged wife and a heroin addict, both of whom betrayed Porter following a $140,000 heist from the local Chinese triads. After Lynn shot Porter and the two left him for dead, Val rejoined the Outfit, a powerful criminal organization, using $130,000 of the heist money to repay an outstanding debt. Porter is intent on reclaiming his $70,000 cut.Porter first tracks down and confronts his wife Lynn, who has at this point become a prostitute out of shame of shooting him. After seeing how low she has sunk into drugs and prostitution, Porter takes pity on Lynn and confines her to her bedroom, only to discover the next day that she has died from a heroin overdose. (Whether Lynn's overdose was a suicide or an accident is never made clear).Porter enlists the help of a call girl, named Rosie (Maria Bello), who is affiliated with the Outfit. Porter once served as her limo driver, during which time they had a one-night stand. Lynn's jealousy and the fact that Porter had cheated on her with Rosie led to her and Resnick double-crossing Porter. To get to Resnick, Porter must deal with a lowlife drug dealer and gambler named Arthur Stegman (David Paymer), crime bosses from the Outfit, the Chinese triads, and two corrupt police detectives named Hicks and Leary (Bill Duke and Jack Conley).The sadistic Resnick is seeing a dominatrix named Pearl (Lucy Liu), who has connections of the Chinese triads,...