Feature: Silver Screen: Max Payne (XBX)

This project can be traced all the way back to the release of the first game in 2001, where a blurb from the developer basically said a Max Payne movie is inbound. The rumour is that a script was complete and locked in a vault somewhere at Fox and only came out of hiding when the writers' strike created a lack of new material. Though this is, like we say, a rumour, seeing the end product, we feel there may be some truth in that.

Admittedly the game's plot was hardly stellar. Revolving around the death of Max Payne's wife and baby, it may have been hard and edgy, but the twists that came aren't memorable in the least. The movie actually forced us to check up on Wikipedia, because at times the movie's story seemed to be straying far from the source material, only it doesn't; all the plot twists happened in the game too. In that sense, Max Payne has a lot going for it. The story about his family's death is told through flashbacks, so there are a lot of similarities, but it all comes undone with some of the worst acting ever seen.

Marky Mark Wahlberg can put in a good performance every once in a while (The Departed), but this, along with The Happening, proves that the guy seems incapable of putting in two good performances in a row. Even when he's standing over his dead wife and baby, he seems completely emotionless. And he keeps this up throughout the entire film, scowling constantly at everyone who should look his way. Even his lines are delivered in such a way that you have zero compassion for this character and are just begging him to shoot someone (though this isn't helped by the dreadful script).

The awfulness even carries onto the supporting cast. Mila Kunis as the bad girl out for vengeance character, Mona Sax, just doesn't work. Probably because she's being played by someone who you feel could be knocked over by a gentle breeze, even if she does have a machine gun in her hands. The tip of the bad casting iceberg, though, lies with Jim Bravura. In the game, he was your stereotypical fat, donut-eating cop, and a likeable guy. In the movie, he's played by Ludacris. Yes, the black rapper. Not only does he not look like the character he's playing, but most importantly, he's a pretty bad actor.

Another crippling fault with Max Payne (yes, there's more) is the action scenes, or lack thereof. The game and its sequel were renowned for their bullet time ballet, it comes as quite a shock to see only one real bullet time sequence in the entire movie. There are bits where the action goes into slow motion, but those are over in a matter of seconds. Here's a tip for the director: if you're making an action movie, make sure you have some decent action in it. There's nothing here that hasn't been done in another movie before it. And not once does he heal himself by taking some painkillers.

Amazingly, we almost forgot something. Something so terrible we actually blacked it out of our mind in the hope it would go away forever. It didn’t. If you watched the trailer then you'd see a bunch of angels/valkyres descending from the heavens. Apparently this is meant to be an hallucination that characters have after taking the drug 'V'. The problem is it's not exactly explained well enough, so those who are not familiar with the game's premise may find themselves a little lost for words. There are far better ways to indicate a character is having a drug trip without having winged creatures fly around and drag people through windows. We have no clue why this would be added, other than the fact the game used the line "the flesh of fallen angels", which hardly makes the literal inclusion of them necessary.

The only good thing to really say about Max Payne is that it's shot quite beautifully. Some nice swooping shots over New York and the way it looks does it make it seem very much like a film noir story. The problem is the good looks have been pasted onto an absolute dog that should be put down before it bites anyone's head off. If this is any indication of what studios think represents an acceptable game-to-film adaptation, it's fair to saythey still have a long way to climb.

Words by Adam Gulliver