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mrrieperTrigger warning for infanticide
For anyone who hasn't heard of the game franchise Max Payne, you're missing out. It's a series of games starring Max Payne (duh), an NYPD detective who is half Bogart and half Neo from The Matrix.
Now if that sounds like a strange mix, don't worry. It's great! Basically, he's Bogart in as much as he's a film noir cliché, with a very flowery inner monologue that sounds like it came straight from a forties detective film. The Matrix part is that you can activate bullet time (basically slow motion, which allows you to aim and shoot enemies before they can react). When the original game came out in 2001, it revolutionised third person shooters. The game was followed by two sequels (one in 2003, the second in 2012), which both received excellent reviews as well, although the third heavily differed in tone from the first two.
However, we're not here to talk about the games. That's for another time. In between the releases of Max Payne 2 and Max Payne 3, a Max Payne film came out in 2008. Loosely based on the events of the first game, it starred Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne. Spoilers for the film follow, and by association spoilers for the first game.
The film opens in media res, with Max sinking into the freezing Hudson River. As he slowly sinks beneath the surface, we hear his inner monologue talking about how he doesn't believe in Heaven, he only believes in pain and fear. Already I'm rolling my eyes at this stereotypical action movie dialogue, but then he starts talking about how there's an army of dead people under the ocean, waiting to draw him down to join them. This got my attention, because this felt like the kind of monologue he'd give in the games, and I was thinking "okay, this feels cool". Sadly, this is the only time he has any kind of monologue in the film, and it's also probably the best part of the film. Given that this monologue lasts approximately sixty seconds, and there's near enough two hours of film remaining, that's not good.
It then cuts back to a week earlier, where we discover that Max is a detective who only gets given cold cases that are impossible to solve. Already that's a big difference from the source material, where he joins the DEA and goes undercover in the mob. This part of the film is also where we discover that his wife and daughter were murdered by home invaders dosed on Valkyr, a new drug that's on the scene. Now the film just tells us this, we don't actually see what happens to his family until about halfway through the film. In the game, the first playable part is when Max comes home to find his wife and daughter killed. It's completely playable, and you hear his family being killed as you rush to try and save them (including his six month old daughter).
Another deviation from the game is the lack of the Mafia in the story. For two thirds of the game you're lead to believe the Mafia are the main villains behind the drug Valkyr, before it's revealed to be a failed super soldier serum that the creator decided to keep working on. In the film, while one of the Mafia underbosses (Jack Lupino) from the game appears, there's no evidence of him being a mafioso. Instead he's an ex-soldier who was a test subject for Valkyr, the continued usage of which drove him to violent insanity. In the game, about the only similarity between the two is that he's addicted to Valkyr, and violently insane.
There are a couple of scenes in the film where they have little references to the games (one of the first areas we see in the film is Roscoe Street Subway Station, which is the first proper level in the game, and Jack Lupino is confronted at a club he owns called Ragna Rock in both the film and game).
However, before we get to any exciting fight with Jack in the film, we have to first get through the first hour or so of the film. Apart from a very brief scene with Max torturing a suspect in a train station bathroom and an equally brief scene where his partner is murdered by Lupino who then throws Max around like a ragdoll, the entirety of the first nearly fifty minutes is basically people getting into arguments and stalking about the place.
The reason this is an issue is that Max Payne the game is essentially a playable John Woo simulator. Basically you run around shooting people for the entirety of the game, and you don't care how repetitive that may seem because the shooting is really damn good. So the film having barely any action in the first half is not fitting. Especially when the dialogue is just dull and generic.
But anyway, eventually the film remembers it's roots and decides to go full John Woo. Oh wait, that's what would have happened if the film wasn't crap. Instead the first action scene has Max being shot at by armoured SWAT (who are corrupt so it doesn't matter to his superiors that he shoots them), and he takes cover behind a wall and blindfires at them. Of course because he's the protagonist he has pin point accurate aim while roughly ten trained SWAT cops can't aim for shit.
So anyway the next action scene is Max vs Lupino. Anyone who's played the game knows that Lupino is a tough sonofabitch who constantly howls like a wolf and is a guy who worships pretty much every demon you've ever heard of. Lupino in the film is much quieter, and only talks about Norse Valkyries and who they're looking out for (either Max or Lupino). After a brief fight where Max uses his shotgun to block sword attacks, Lupino is unceremoniously shot in the back by BB. How dull.
For people who played the game, BB is the guy who killed Max's partner and only appears in a brief scene where he tries to get Max on his side before being killed by Max. He's not a very interesting character, and he's not the main villain. However he is the main villain in the film, and it's revealed he was Max's father's partner. Max's father was never mentioned in the games and only appears in the comics made to tie in to the third game. In that he's a Vietnam Vet who suffers from PTSD and abuses his wife, rather than a cop. Admittedly the film did come out before the comics, but it's still a cliché for the main character in a cop film to have a cop father who was betrayed (I think he was anyway, I kind of lost interest around this point).
So anyway BB betrays Max and rather than shooting him in the head and being done with it, he instead decides to frame him as a Valkyr addict who commited suicide by handcuffing himself and jumping into the river. He does this by slipping a vial of Valkyr into his coat pocket. For some reason he chooses not to empty the vial and therefore make it look like Max actually took the Valkyr, which proves his undoing when Max manages to break free of his handcuffs (via getting the goon with BB to accidentally shoot the cuffs.) He then knocks the goon and BB to the ground and runs away, with the goon and BB giving chase and managing to miss every shot. Max then dives into the freezing cold river, leading us back to the beginning of the film.
Despite the fact that the opening showed Max unconscious in freezing cold water, apparently all he needed to wake up was a hallucination of his dead wife saying... something to him (I missed what it was exactly). So he swims back to the dock and climbs out, then decides that in order to not die of exposure he must take the does of Valkyr that BB was so kind to give him. Within seconds of taking it, Max gets to his knees and starts TRIPPING. BALLS. Basically it starts snowing fire, and then he screams like a madman as the world around him catches fire. This was actually a pretty cool moment imo, and it leads into his assault on the Aesir building (the company behind the creation of Valkyr).
Max tracks down BB and his armed security to the Aesir Corporation, and tears through them like... well, like in the games. He sprints towards them while dual wielding machine pistols just as BB escapes. Sadly this is the most intense it really gets, other than that he shoots a couple of goons and manages to shake of getting blasted with a shotgun and an Uzi. I will admit I thought it was funny that Max only really started fighting like Max from the games when he was high on Valkyr, whereas in the games he just does it all the time.
So the film ends with Max shooting BB in slow motion. Note that this is maybe the third use of bullet time in the film, whereas in the game it's controllable by the player so you can use it whenever you like. Then Max just falls to his knees on the helipad, and apparently stays like that long enough for night time to turn to dawn. Then cops find him, and the credits roll.
Apparently there's a post credits scene which shows Mona - oh shit I forget to mention Mona? I suppose that shows how much of an impact she made on the film. Basically she's an assassin who helps Max for reasons - meeting Max in a bar and telling him about his next target, Nicole Horne (the actual villain of the game). This implies that Max got absolved of going rogue and killing a bunch of people. Yes this happens in the game, however the game explains it by way of a shadowy Illuminati-esque government conspiracy making all the charges against Max go away (yes really). The film just doesn't explain it.
So anyway, Max Payne's film adaptation is bad. Sadly, it's the only film adaptation we have. Thankfully we have the three games to try and forget the existence of the film, but forgetting this mess will be difficult.
I thought I had made a choice in watching this film, but there are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask 'Why me?' and 'What if I hadn't watched this awful film?', when you look back, see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or a forked lightning. If you had watched a different film, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, reviewing another shitty film.
For anyone who hasn't heard of the game franchise Max Payne, you're missing out. It's a series of games starring Max Payne (duh), an NYPD detective who is half Bogart and half Neo from The Matrix.
Now if that sounds like a strange mix, don't worry. It's great! Basically, he's Bogart in as much as he's a film noir cliché, with a very flowery inner monologue that sounds like it came straight from a forties detective film. The Matrix part is that you can activate bullet time (basically slow motion, which allows you to aim and shoot enemies before they can react). When the original game came out in 2001, it revolutionised third person shooters. The game was followed by two sequels (one in 2003, the second in 2012), which both received excellent reviews as well, although the third heavily differed in tone from the first two.
However, we're not here to talk about the games. That's for another time. In between the releases of Max Payne 2 and Max Payne 3, a Max Payne film came out in 2008. Loosely based on the events of the first game, it starred Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne. Spoilers for the film follow, and by association spoilers for the first game.
The film opens in media res, with Max sinking into the freezing Hudson River. As he slowly sinks beneath the surface, we hear his inner monologue talking about how he doesn't believe in Heaven, he only believes in pain and fear. Already I'm rolling my eyes at this stereotypical action movie dialogue, but then he starts talking about how there's an army of dead people under the ocean, waiting to draw him down to join them. This got my attention, because this felt like the kind of monologue he'd give in the games, and I was thinking "okay, this feels cool". Sadly, this is the only time he has any kind of monologue in the film, and it's also probably the best part of the film. Given that this monologue lasts approximately sixty seconds, and there's near enough two hours of film remaining, that's not good.
It then cuts back to a week earlier, where we discover that Max is a detective who only gets given cold cases that are impossible to solve. Already that's a big difference from the source material, where he joins the DEA and goes undercover in the mob. This part of the film is also where we discover that his wife and daughter were murdered by home invaders dosed on Valkyr, a new drug that's on the scene. Now the film just tells us this, we don't actually see what happens to his family until about halfway through the film. In the game, the first playable part is when Max comes home to find his wife and daughter killed. It's completely playable, and you hear his family being killed as you rush to try and save them (including his six month old daughter).
Another deviation from the game is the lack of the Mafia in the story. For two thirds of the game you're lead to believe the Mafia are the main villains behind the drug Valkyr, before it's revealed to be a failed super soldier serum that the creator decided to keep working on. In the film, while one of the Mafia underbosses (Jack Lupino) from the game appears, there's no evidence of him being a mafioso. Instead he's an ex-soldier who was a test subject for Valkyr, the continued usage of which drove him to violent insanity. In the game, about the only similarity between the two is that he's addicted to Valkyr, and violently insane.
There are a couple of scenes in the film where they have little references to the games (one of the first areas we see in the film is Roscoe Street Subway Station, which is the first proper level in the game, and Jack Lupino is confronted at a club he owns called Ragna Rock in both the film and game).
However, before we get to any exciting fight with Jack in the film, we have to first get through the first hour or so of the film. Apart from a very brief scene with Max torturing a suspect in a train station bathroom and an equally brief scene where his partner is murdered by Lupino who then throws Max around like a ragdoll, the entirety of the first nearly fifty minutes is basically people getting into arguments and stalking about the place.
The reason this is an issue is that Max Payne the game is essentially a playable John Woo simulator. Basically you run around shooting people for the entirety of the game, and you don't care how repetitive that may seem because the shooting is really damn good. So the film having barely any action in the first half is not fitting. Especially when the dialogue is just dull and generic.
But anyway, eventually the film remembers it's roots and decides to go full John Woo. Oh wait, that's what would have happened if the film wasn't crap. Instead the first action scene has Max being shot at by armoured SWAT (who are corrupt so it doesn't matter to his superiors that he shoots them), and he takes cover behind a wall and blindfires at them. Of course because he's the protagonist he has pin point accurate aim while roughly ten trained SWAT cops can't aim for shit.
So anyway the next action scene is Max vs Lupino. Anyone who's played the game knows that Lupino is a tough sonofabitch who constantly howls like a wolf and is a guy who worships pretty much every demon you've ever heard of. Lupino in the film is much quieter, and only talks about Norse Valkyries and who they're looking out for (either Max or Lupino). After a brief fight where Max uses his shotgun to block sword attacks, Lupino is unceremoniously shot in the back by BB. How dull.
For people who played the game, BB is the guy who killed Max's partner and only appears in a brief scene where he tries to get Max on his side before being killed by Max. He's not a very interesting character, and he's not the main villain. However he is the main villain in the film, and it's revealed he was Max's father's partner. Max's father was never mentioned in the games and only appears in the comics made to tie in to the third game. In that he's a Vietnam Vet who suffers from PTSD and abuses his wife, rather than a cop. Admittedly the film did come out before the comics, but it's still a cliché for the main character in a cop film to have a cop father who was betrayed (I think he was anyway, I kind of lost interest around this point).
So anyway BB betrays Max and rather than shooting him in the head and being done with it, he instead decides to frame him as a Valkyr addict who commited suicide by handcuffing himself and jumping into the river. He does this by slipping a vial of Valkyr into his coat pocket. For some reason he chooses not to empty the vial and therefore make it look like Max actually took the Valkyr, which proves his undoing when Max manages to break free of his handcuffs (via getting the goon with BB to accidentally shoot the cuffs.) He then knocks the goon and BB to the ground and runs away, with the goon and BB giving chase and managing to miss every shot. Max then dives into the freezing cold river, leading us back to the beginning of the film.
Despite the fact that the opening showed Max unconscious in freezing cold water, apparently all he needed to wake up was a hallucination of his dead wife saying... something to him (I missed what it was exactly). So he swims back to the dock and climbs out, then decides that in order to not die of exposure he must take the does of Valkyr that BB was so kind to give him. Within seconds of taking it, Max gets to his knees and starts TRIPPING. BALLS. Basically it starts snowing fire, and then he screams like a madman as the world around him catches fire. This was actually a pretty cool moment imo, and it leads into his assault on the Aesir building (the company behind the creation of Valkyr).
Max tracks down BB and his armed security to the Aesir Corporation, and tears through them like... well, like in the games. He sprints towards them while dual wielding machine pistols just as BB escapes. Sadly this is the most intense it really gets, other than that he shoots a couple of goons and manages to shake of getting blasted with a shotgun and an Uzi. I will admit I thought it was funny that Max only really started fighting like Max from the games when he was high on Valkyr, whereas in the games he just does it all the time.
So the film ends with Max shooting BB in slow motion. Note that this is maybe the third use of bullet time in the film, whereas in the game it's controllable by the player so you can use it whenever you like. Then Max just falls to his knees on the helipad, and apparently stays like that long enough for night time to turn to dawn. Then cops find him, and the credits roll.
Apparently there's a post credits scene which shows Mona - oh shit I forget to mention Mona? I suppose that shows how much of an impact she made on the film. Basically she's an assassin who helps Max for reasons - meeting Max in a bar and telling him about his next target, Nicole Horne (the actual villain of the game). This implies that Max got absolved of going rogue and killing a bunch of people. Yes this happens in the game, however the game explains it by way of a shadowy Illuminati-esque government conspiracy making all the charges against Max go away (yes really). The film just doesn't explain it.
So anyway, Max Payne's film adaptation is bad. Sadly, it's the only film adaptation we have. Thankfully we have the three games to try and forget the existence of the film, but forgetting this mess will be difficult.
I thought I had made a choice in watching this film, but there are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask 'Why me?' and 'What if I hadn't watched this awful film?', when you look back, see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or a forked lightning. If you had watched a different film, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, reviewing another shitty film.
