I know what you’re thinking and I was right there with you! You moaned and groaned at yet ANOTHER movie based off a video game and not just ANY video game! No – of course not – noone played this one. Max Payne came out around the time of a dozen or so other first person shoot ‘em ups. I personally thought it was a sleeper game (not like a hit, more ZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZzzzz..) but some people got a kick out of it. The story of the game is very much like the Punisher in the sense you got a cop and his family is murdered and the cop continues searching for leads and the killers until one of two things happen:
1. He is killed dead or;
2. He mutilates every last bad guy until eventually he caps the ones that took out wifey and kiddie.
Rockstar Games’ action movie was directed by John Moore from the new Omen and stars Marky Mark as Max Payne. The movie also features some VERY underused talent including Beau Bridges, Chris O’Donnell and Donal Logue. All of the supporting cast put forth a great show but could have been given more to work with.
As I sat in the dark for what seemed like forever I kept looking at my watch wondering just HOW long this setup was going to take. Not much of a hook to this thing and they took so long to get to the meat of the story. They had to explain the set-up and that took half the movie and since it was a scant over 90-minutes it was way too long. You could pull all that crap off in a creative title credit or let the story unfold the backstory. Once the first half was over the action got picked up and it was pretty off the hook with some unique stunt sequences. They pulled out the Matrix slow-mo scenes and all that but there wasn’t enough oomph in the end result.
The movie’s story all comes down to one thing: greed. Pharmaceutical greed to be precise and big government contracts in order to create super soldiers. As what usually happens in these things the drug didn’t work and created a bunch of nut jobs and found its way on the market for rec use. Although the Valkrie were COOL they were NOT needed but it was a fascinating way to explain away the psychotic hold of the drug.
The movie was either way too short or they just took too damn long explaining stuff that didn’t need explaining. There was a lot of shooting but not a lot of blood – someone needs to take a course on marksmanship (get the pun?). Two scenes they showed from the trailer weren’t even IN the movie – I hate that. The editing was crappy. Some poor jerk gets torn to shreds then THWAP! – new scene. It was extremely awkward. Actual fans of the game will notice that the “big boss” from the game is in the movie but is NOT the villian (geeze.. I hope this doesn’t mean there will be a sequal). Like most movies where the producers know it’s not so hot all the best scenes are in the trailer.
If you are bored and want to see some mindless action while eating cheese puffs then gor for Max Payne.
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