Max Payne

Video game based movies have been around since the ill fated Super Mario Bros. in 1993, and have yet to hit their stride despite some concerted effort from Hollywood. Except for anything made by Uwe Boll. That guy likes to take a piss in the movie punch bowl. Seriously, he’s the worst.

As a matter of fact, the highest rated videogame movie on Rotten Tomatoes is 2001′s animated Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. And that only has a 44% rating. Plus it put the animation studio responsible (Square Pictures) out of business.

As an avid gamer, I can see why these movies are so hard to make good. Boiling down a 10-12 hour game into a 1.5 hour movie is the first hurdle. Then you have to decide who you want to market it to. Should it stay true to the source material, keeping the hardcore audience happy? That would work, except this path makes the movie all but unwatchable for anyone but the gamers which then severely limits your audience. Or should it take liberty with the source material, potentially making a good movie for the masses but killing the support from the gamers? That would work except negative word of mouth from gamers kills your project before it even hits post production.

What’s left? Compromise. Stay true to the source material, but have the creative freedom to make changes for the greater good of the project. Ideally you will be left with a film that makes everyone happy. Unfortunately, all this path has ever given us are films that are no good to either audience. Gamers still whine while the average Joe chooses to ignore the release altogether.

This Haunted House is crap!

This leads me to 2008′s Max Payne. Ironically I just played through both of the Max Payne games in the last few months, so their cannon is still fresh on the brain. I can tell you that from a gamers perspective the movie is more accurate than most video game based movies.  All the pillar characters are present in their close to video game form, with the title character being played by Mark Wahlberg and femme fatale Mona Sax being played by Mila Kunis.

The film’s plot also does a pretty good job of hitting the major points that the first game lays out. There’s even a decent amount of fan service as well. Locations such as ‘Ragnarok’ and ‘Gognitti Storage’ are but a few of the nods the movie makes to the gaming community. I appreciate details like that, as it strokes my inner-geek-knowledge-library(TM).

While the film succeeds on a surface detail level, if you look a bit deeper it’s easy to notice how rotten the apple really is. Max Payne (game) was released in 2001. Its’ key game-play mechanic was being able to control a character through bullet-time. You know, the same bullet-time that made our jaws drop in 1999 with The Matrix. It was cool as hell in 2001! Close to a decade later this mechanic is totally played out. All of the noir is gone too. The game has slick noir styled comic cut scenes and could make a visually striking film if done right. But where is it?? It’s NOIR to be found!

Mark Wahlberg is a tough guy. We get it. His character Max Payne is a grizzled cop who’s family was brutally murdered. He’s also sort of a tough guy. This should be a perfect match! Too bad no one notified Mark Wahlberg he needs to play a character in a movie, and not himself. Seriously, the guy can’t play anyone but himself. (Except for Boogie Nights… his penis was so fake.) By the time the director gets to showing the audience the scene of him coming home to his slaughtered family, and thus giving Max his emotional gravitas, the movie is like half over! Its’ done way too late in the film, and by that point I have made up my mind that Max Payne is just a bent vigilante who can’t build a bridge to get over it. That’s one thing the game got right; it put this scene up front and center.

As far as the rest of the cast there is not much to write home about. Mila Kunis plays Russian assassin Mona Sax. Too bad she’s not Russian. Not even a little bit. Actually, she doesn’t even try a Russian accent in the film. Her on-screen sister Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) is actually Russian and plays as such, at least for the 2.5 scenes she is in. Bonus: She’s mostly naked through most of them.  Chris “Ludacris” Bridges plays officer Jim Bravura, and Beau “Not Jeff’s Dad” Bridges plays Payne family friend BB Hensley.

The only standout in the movie is Chris “Pretty Boy” O’Donnell. His part is a total departure from the assured and romantic playboys he has played throughout his career. His character Jason Colvin is weak, has no spine, and is almost painfully awkward. Unfortunately his role (like half nude Olga mentioned earlier) is regrettably short. I think he has 8 minutes of screen time, and 7.75 of that is getting his face punched in by Max Payne.

What a gorgeous view.

The truth is that this movie is not truly terrible. It’s just late to the game. A perfect example would be the hallucinations seen by the drug addicts in the movie. It’s totally ripped from 2005′s Constantine. Bullet time? 1999′s The Matrix. In fact the game franchise this movie is based on hasn’t been relevant since 2004, and that’s being generous. I may have felt differently about this had it appeared in theaters 5 or 6 years ago, but I can’t ignore that fact.

As a videogame based movie, it strikes a chord. Just the right amount of fan service and dedication to the source material allow it to stick out (ever so slightly) from a genre dominated by pure crap.

As a movie?

It’s just Payneful.

Author: Bryan

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