Max Payne (2008) - Originally Written May 15, 2012

Max Payne (2008)

Watching the Movie: 

The biggest problem with Max Payne as a movie is that it really doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a gritty crime drama? Is it an action oriented shoot em up? Is it a supernatural thriller? It tries to combine elements of all three together into one concoction; and the results are disastrous. At best the movie is disorganized and confusing and at worst it's flat out boring. It has some very cool visuals, but nothing worth sitting through the full two hour movie to experience; the 90 second trailer has the same effect.

Screening the film: 

Man's obsession and how it affects his reality; pharmacology and the role of drugs in American Society. Law enforcement and what a cop "should be", family life, private service vs public service. Some decent images of religion and mythology; and finally personal responsibility and accountability for his own environment.

Best Dialogue: 

"When the people a man needs get taken away from him, you can't ever go back to who you were before."

The Rant:

Let's embrace cold hard truths that all Gamers know... movies based on video games always have and always will SUCKED and BLOWN, and Max Payne is no exception. There are always creative liberties taken with story lines; as most video games take anywhere from 12-50 hours to tell their tales; movies have 90-180 minutes. However, a story as simple as "An NYPD detective with a bad play on words for a name comes home to find his wife and baby murdered" doesn't need this much tweaking...
 
Max Payne in the video games is a cop first and foremost struggling with keeping his own demons in check, he's haunted by the murder of his family, but when all is said and done he's still a cop working a beat and doing a job. His moral compass is all sorts of screwed up, but it still points mostly true north. Max Payne from the film is an obsessed cowboy who wipes his ass with what his job description is. This would be fine if say, Bruce Willis were playing the character, as it is, Mark Wahlberg portrays Max Payne less as a mindless vigilante out for justice at all costs and more like a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum. As such, we never see what really drives Wahlberg as Payne, is he seeking retribution, vindication or just simple explanation? Either way, Marky Mark portrays Payne as a guy who just had his golf clubs stolen and really wants his driver back rather than a man just missed saving his family from violent death. It's an emotional story being told by an emotionless performance.

The Bottom Line: 

The best quotation from above; it appears in neither version of the film (Theatrical or the Unrated Director's cut), and that's all you need to know about this as a movie or a film. It's a disorganized cluster of a movie. It's images as a film are done much better elsewhere and because it tries to be everything to everyone as a movie, it really has no unifying message.

2 out of 5

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