Max Payne: The Movie

For Chinese New Year, my brother got me to sit down and watch a movie with him. I'm not a big movie watcher, especially in the theaters. Unless it's something particularly relevant, I have a hard time spending a couple hours essentially just watching TV. But being something video game related and that I could talk about on the blog, I agreed.

When we went to go rent the movie, I asked him why he was interested in it. He explained that he was interested in Max Payne's battle against the demons. I thought, yeah, I guess that's true Max Payne had a lot of personal demons and if they had really developed that part of the plot, it could be really good. Then I looked at the back of the box, there were actual demons with like claws and wings flying around.

I was a little confused watching the movie. There was all sorts of drug use so I assumed it was causing people to hallucinate and see demons. But then all these people were going around dying being torn to pieces by the beasts and being pulled out of windows. So I never really figured out why there were demons in the movie. Despite them, I was enjoying the movie about 80% the way through. But then it got to a point where I had to call Travis and ask him about the accuracy of the Max Payne movie versus Max Payne the game. Around that point is when the movie went downhill and really never had a chance to pull itself back out.

I wasn't upset that the movie didn't follow the game. We all know that's what movie adaptations are known for and what fans always whine about. I've never played Max Payne so that's not the case for me. But when I called Travis, it was at a point in the movie where things just got totally ridiculous. It felt like they were just throwing things on the wall trying to see what stuck. I called Travis to see if maybe that's how the game went in order to understand the reasoning behind the madness. If the choices had been modeled after the game, I think I would have been more understanding.

In the end, actually there really was no end. No summation. No happy ending. No sad ending. Max Payne shoots someone for revenge. The guys dies. Payne falls to his knees. Then the police show up. And the credits roll. They had plenty to build on. A romance with Mila Kunis. The performance of Christopher Bridges (Look him up). The three years he searched for his wife's killer. They ended up going with Max Payne taking the drug himself and then becoming some possessed being shooting up everything in sight.

I really don't even know how to end this post so I'll take a cue from the movie.

Written By David Liao.

Also, why is Mark Wahlberg always making the same face? He just scrunches up his face and eyebrows and acts mad. He looked very one dimensional in this movie. I blame the movie cause I know he's been better.