Max Payne (DVD)

Max Payne is a maverick cop determined to find the killers of his wife and baby. Sidelined to the cold case unit by the force, he looks for the murderers by night, trawling the dark underworld in the hopes of finding answers. While doing so he encounters drug addicts under the influence of designer drug Valkyrie, which is incredibly addictive and gives its users terrifying visions and superhuman strength. He also forges an uneasy alliance with assassin ...
...bullets? Why doesn't anyone stop Max when he's walking into his ex-partner's office to steal stuff? If you were on the brink of death would you take a highly dangerous drug? And would you act as back-up to someone you barely knew, going into a building full of armed guards in the almost certain knowledge you'd die?

Max Payne is an indestructible action hero with virtually no personality. We never see him going about his family life ... more

Max Payne is a maverick cop determined to find the killers of his wife and baby. Sidelined to the cold case unit by the force, he looks for the murderers by night, trawling the dark underworld in the hopes of finding answers. While doing so he encounters drug addicts under the influence of designer drug Valkyrie, which is incredibly addictive and gives its users terrifying visions and superhuman strength. He also forges an uneasy alliance with assassin Mona Sax and suffers a terrible betrayal…

Will there ever be a decent computer game adaptation on the big screen? The more I see of them, the less likely it appears there will ever be one and this movie is no exception. Director John Moore is best known for his remakes of "The Omen" and "Flight of the Phoenix", so quality is hardly his byword. He has no idea how to create or maintain tension. He signposts virtually every twist and turn, so it's obvious where the film is going from very early on. He doesn't spend any time developing the characters, so it's impossible to care about any of the players. The circular narrative feels like a pointless affectation, whose sole purpose is to enable the portentous opening voiceover. Moore makes a stab at a design aesthetic - he's going for a doom-laden film noir style that presumably reflects the look of the original game. So the film is bleached-out to make it seem more like black and white, with occasional flashes of bright red. There is lots of moody lighting and shadowy shots that are supposed to convey a sense of menace, as are the many shots framed from a low angle. The backdrop of angular art deco architecture and the deco font used for time stamps add to the noir pretensions. But most of the locations look like soundstage sets which prevent the world from feeling realistic. He shows the ragged winged angels too soon and makes it obvious they are the product of drug-addled minds, thus knee-capping a potential supernatural subplot. The computer-generated effects are reasonable, but they jar with the rest of the movie.

Despite the high body-count and the number of shootouts there is no excitement whatsoever. The stagy blocking makes all actions feel forced. The fights are poorly choreographed and badly edited, so you can see the moment the actors and stunt performers step into place to prepare. The fact that gunshots frequently lift people off their feet but the wounds are largely bloodless also hampers believability. Moore's timing is awful, consistently fumbling moments of possible tension so the pacing lags. As a result the film feels too long at a hundred minutes. And the ending is clearly a set-up for a dodgy sequel. I couldn't help wondering if the game is more fulfilling.

The screenplay by first-timer Beau Thorne doesn't give me any hope for his future career. There is no preamble so we don't get to know any of the characters before the carnage kicks off. Consequently we don't give a damn about any of them. There is barely any plot to speak of and you can spot the production's computer game origins. Basically the hero attacks one group of thugs after another as he works his way up the food chain to the big boss. It always feels as though we are working our way through a series of levels with minor objectives. The meagre plot is riddled with holes. For instance, if your boss was a psychopath that killed people for fun, would you go into his warehouse full of drugs and start spraying his supplies with bullets? Why doesn't anyone stop Max when he's walking into his ex-partner's office to steal stuff? If you were on the brink of death would you take a highly dangerous drug? And would you act as back-up to someone you barely knew, going into a building full of armed guards in the almost certain knowledge you'd die?

Max Payne is an indestructible action hero with virtually no personality. We never see him going about his family life so we don't empathise with his loss or understand his quest for vengeance. Other players are nothing more than plot devices and I suspect Mona Sax appears in the game as a second player option. She's introduced as a super assassin, but never gets to do much. Villain Lupino is a generic madman, BB Hensley is a stock mentor figure and Payne's ex-partner Alex Balder is a lazy plot motor. There's barely a personality between all of them. The dialogue is stilted throughout. The hero makes bald statements on a regular basis that make him and the screenwriter appear rather dim.

Mark Wahlberg is in action man mode as the titular character, which means he spends most of the movie squinting and looking slightly constipated. He handles himself well in the fights and looks comfortable handling weapons. He has absolutely zero chemistry with any of his female co-stars and you get the impression there is nothing going on behind his eyes. So there's nothing to empathise with, especially as the character is virtually indestructible.

Mila Kunis feels surplus to requirements as Mona Sax. The role is dreadfully under-written so she barely has a personality and her lack of emotional responses to events makes her impossible to feel for. Not only that, but she looks as though she's never even handled a gun before and you can barely see her face for all the make-up trowelled onto it. Olga Kurylenko is slinky but slutty as Mona's short-lived sister Natasha but has little to do other than stand around in various states of undress.

Amaury Nolasco proves you don't even have to speak to be wooden as gurning madman Lupino. He manages to make a meal of the simplest actions, rendering him the least effective villain I have seen for some time. Chris O'Donnell is redundant as cowardly bureaucrat Jason Colvin. He tries to do too much with a secondary role, making the limited subtext obvious. Beau Bridges is adequate as Payne's benevolent mentor BB Hensley. But he doesn't get enough screen-time to establish a three-dimensional personality and he fumbles the character reversal part way through. Donal Logue and Nelly Furtado are forgettable as Max's former police partner Alex and his wife Christa.

The original music by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders feels like a riff on the cheap synthesizer scores of John Carpenter's B-movie back catalogue. An excess of drum machines and electronic melodies alternates with overblown strings and drums, echoing percussion and squealing motifs. It feels melodramatic in the context of the film and is yet another aspect of the production that feels shoddy.

"Max Payne" is another lame computer game adaptation that will no doubt make its money back from fans of the original. The direction is poor, the writing laughably bad, the performances not much better and the overall effect is of a film studio trying to make a buck from a shameless cash-in. Unfortunately for them the game is no longer top of the heap and this serving of tripe isn't going to help matters. If you want to watch a decent noir shoot-em-up, look through James Cagney's filmography and if you're after a good computer adaptation, it would appear there's no such thing. 

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