MAX PAYNE

Release Date:	October 17, 2008
Directed by:	John Moore
Genre:	Action/Crime/Drama/Thriller
Starring:	Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges & Olga Kurylenko
Approx. Runtime:	100 min.
MPAA Rating:	PG-13 for Violence Including Intense Shooting Sequences, Drug Content, Some Sexuality and Brief Strong Language

“proof that video game adaptations still just . . . suck.”If there is a great mystery surrounding the release of director John Moore’s Max Payne, it lies in the much speculated identity of its debut writer Beau Thorne, who is described quite simply as a recent twenty something year old graduate of the University of Texas-Austin, making him a perfect candid for the job. You see, Mr. Thorne is just inexperienced enough in his trade of choice to know who he’s ripping off but not how obvious he is in doing so. Based on the 2001 video game of the same name, Max Payne is indisputable proof that video game adaptations still just . . . suck.

Apparently as bored as he is boring in the titicular role, Wahlberg sulks and pouts his way through much of Max Payne, barely recognizable as the actor we came to know and love hot off the Oscar nominated success of his standout role as Sergeant Dignam of Martin Scorsese’s The Departed fame. The film opens with Max working as a clerk in the N.Y.P.D. Cold Case Department he’s worked for in the three years since the brutal murders of his wife and infant child. Obsessed with the finding the persons responsible and the avenging of their horrific deaths, Max’s sadistic desires have come to consume him over the years, as reflected by his work attire: a bad ass clashing of black on black on–you guessed it!–black (dude, we get it, you’re tough). Though most of his leads have landed him in dead ends, he finds a live one in the suspicious uprising of a new drug conspiracy that, when taken, can cause superhuman powers and hallucinations–a thread that ultimately goes nowhere in the pictures preference of all matters brawny and blood thirsty. Joining Max in his quest for revenge is a sexy lady assassin, played by Mila Kunas and a line treading Internal Affairs officer, who’s technically investigating Max’s involvement in an entire complication of questionable deaths across the city over a span of several years.

For years now I’ve lain quietly in wait for that first great video game movie and, with the complexity of the medium exploding at an erratic rate, I approached Max Payne with a profound sense of optimism. After all, if there is a single critic in this pretentious business of ours, more than willing to admit his guilty pleasure in the slow motion in-and-out whizzing of gunfire, it is most certainly I–an outspoken fanboy of vintage Rodriquez and Tarantino in the pinnacles of their unprecedented B-movie glory. I haven’t a problem with brainless entertainment, so long as it’s . . . well, brainless and entertaining. Where John Moore and company go wrong lies in their being brainless and boring.

Aside from a handful of sharply photographed nourish New York city set pieces–the weather alternating in erratic shades of fluttering snow and driving rain–Max Payne offers nothing. From the overworked rain machine, to the self-conscious Marco Beltrami soundtrack, to Wahlberg’s constipated performance, nearly every frame of this hole ridden death wish thriller screams straight to DVD. Now, I never played the game the movie is based on so I’m hardly one to go dissecting its faithfulness to the material, though I would expect the games interactivity to create a far more compelling experience than the painful subjection of mediocrity that is its sluggish screen adaptation.

I also find it noteworthy that Max Payne should sneak by those clowns at the Motion Picture Association of America with a PG-13 rating, having won its much publicized appeal by John Moore on the behalf of its distributers at 20^th Century Fox. Never mind that Max Payne is a bloodbath. Never mind its plot concerns itself almost entirely with the plights of a rogue cop out to avenge the murders of his wife and infant child. Never mind the astronomical body count that makes most slasher movies blush. Now 8-year olds can check it out in all its blood basking hard "R" under the strict condition that Olga Kurylenko’s exposed breasts be turned from the camera to avoid the corruption of young teenage minds.

Mostly though, Max Payne is more dull than offensive. It’s also strictly bargain bin.

D+