Max Payne - Review

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Length: 100 min

Rated: PG-13

Distributor: Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Release Date: 2008-10-17

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Natasha Alam, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Ludacris, Chris O'Donnell, Nelly Furtado, Donal Logue, Joel Gordon, Kate Burton

Directed by John Moore

Produced by Scott Faye, Julie Silverman

Written by Beau Thorne, Shawn Ryan, Thomas H. Fenton, Sam Lake

Visit the movie's Official Site!

Reviewed by Katey Rich : 2008-10-16 17:31:42

It's theoretically still true that Mark Wahlberg is a promising, talented actor, but his movie output this year has mostly served as argument to send him away forever. The Happening and now Max Payne have featured Wahlberg as a blank-eyed everyman trying, and failing, to make sense out of the silliest plot possible. This time the villain isn't trees but black winged demons, and Wahlberg at least gets to play with some firearms, but it's all as meandering and boring as The Happening, without the benefit of a message.

For a movie based on a video game that's entirely about shooting people, Max Payne is surprisingly skimpy on action. Instead there's a lot of time spent setting up atmospherics, watching snow swirl around the ink-black Manhattan settings and zooming in on Max's face, in shadow, as he remembers the murder of his wife and child years earlier. He hunts the police department's Cold Case files for answers, and accidentally gets a clue when he brings home a beautiful woman (Olga Kurylenko, doing nothing to prove her worth as an upcoming Bond girl) who is murdered after she leaves his apartment. The tattoo on her arm matches that of one of Max's wife's killers, and with that clue the hunt is on.

Max teams up with the woman's sister Mona (Mila Kunis, 100% charmless) to investigate and brandish weapons, and before too long they find out-- surprise, surprise!-- that a big evil company is actually involved. Max's wife found out some info about a top-secret drug, and the pharmaceutical company that employed her killed her to shut her up. Beau Bridges and Chris O'Donnell show up as evil suits who get the blame, and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges is also wandering around as a police department internal investigator. As for the winged demon creatures, who show up to attack various bad guys, I'll let you find out that nutty explanation for yourself.

There's actually a pretty cool shoot-out scene in an office building, and some buildings blow up near the end, but mostly Max Payne is grim and dark and brooding, and not in the good way. Bullets slow down for effect, beautiful women stroll in and out, and John Moore seems to be trying to amp up the production design rather than make a story worth watching. What ever happened to action movies that were fun, where you could get a little thrill out of watching explosions and someone cracked a joke once in a while? I guess Max's psychological torment is supposed to make his character deep, but it makes the movie no fun at all. It's probably more satisfying to play the video game yourself, since at least you'll celebrate your victory, unlike mopey Max.

The movie gets an extra half a star for its production design, which at least looks good, and for having the decency not to run longer than two hours. But other than that it's a big nothing, not even hokey enough to watch for the sake of laughing at it.

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Trickster
December 1, 2008 at 13:30

in the movie there are tattoos that the actors have, where could i get a picture of them????? if anyone could help please.

thanks,

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shade the grey
October 19, 2008 at 12:29

It was better than I expected, after seeing "In the name of the King" I didn't expect much out of this movie but was pleasantly surprised.

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Ronnie James Winfield
October 18, 2008 at 13:39

Let me just start by saying that if this movie was called something else instead of Max Payne it may have been acceptable. Now, I am a fan of both games, I have played both throughly and really enjoyed the story. But for the life of me I really don't know what they we're going for with this, they had the characters, and the imagery and feel of the games(The city reminded me alot of Sin City). Then I guess they just decided to write a completely different story, and throw in a few nods to the games here and there. I thought the movie itself looked awesome, the actors did a decent job, but the dialouge sucked, the script and story sucked, and in the end it just really didn't make a whole lot of sense. As a big fan of the games it left me feeling very dissapointed, especially since I had really been looking forward to it, and really wanted it to be good. So there you go, there are the reasons why this was not a good movie.

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sean
October 17, 2008 at 16:49

i found it thouroughly enjoyable, and visually stunning.

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Akillees
October 17, 2008 at 05:06

BEST MOVIE EVER SO STFU ITS GREAT

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Tyler
October 16, 2008 at 22:19

So what exactly is bad about the movie?

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Max Payne - Review

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