Review: Max Payne is Gorgeously Arduous

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

Max Payne is based on a video game that had a sequel, “Max Payne” and “Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne.” Max Payne is a gorgeously arduous experience. Max Payne could have a sequel if Max Payne does well at the box office, which Max Payne will because Max Payne is an action movie with special effects. If so, that sequel might be called Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne.

Max Payne stars Marky Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne, a cop on the edge who lost his family and who is trying to track down the third and final killer of Mrs. Payne and Baby Payne. Max Payne works on cold cases so he has time to devote to his hobby of tracking down mysterious unknown killers. Max Payne blames his guilt-wracked partner (Donal Logue) for not doing enough to track down mysterious unknown killer. Max Payne also has a father figure and mentor in ex-cop B.B. (Beau Bridges), who works security for the Aesir corporation, where Mrs. Payne worked. Also, Max Payne is looking into an evil ring of wing-tattooed people headed up by Evil Crazy Jack Lupino (Amaury Nolasco) who thrive on Valkyr, a drug that kills 99% of its takers and turns the other 1% into jacked up super-soldiers who share hallucinations of evil Nordic angels of death all over the place all the time. When Max Payne goes over the edge and beats up Chris O’Donnell, Internal Affairs cop Bravura (Ludacris) has to try to rein Max Payne in, but reining in Max Payne is easier said than done, because Max Payne is a cop on the edge, you see.

Max Payne ads make a big deal about the ass-kickery of Max Payne co-star Mila Kunis, who plays an assassin named Mona Sax. In Max Payne, though, Kunis serves very little purpose and accomplishes even less. She shows up, beats him up a little, finds one piece of information and then lets Max Payne do everything else to avenge her sister’s (Olga Kurylenko) death.

Max Payne also is full of saddening cliches that take an eternity to play out, thanks to Max Payne’s constant dependence on moody slow-motion. Max Payne includes overused plot elements such as a super-soldier serum, which makes one sad at the prospects of a future Captain America movie from which this concept was popularlized, and it also hinges on a painfully obvious corporate conspiracy, which makes one think that pharmaceutical companies really need to diversify their secret projects that invariably go awry. Max Payne is so obvious in its plot that it is made all the more frustrating when Max Payne himself can’t figure anything out, and when Max Payne stops to brood or hallucinate for what seems like half an hour. Certainly, Max Payne’s hallucinations are beautifully rendered and interesting to take in, but they don’t seem to be in service of anything in the story beyond looking pretty.

Wahlberg says Max Payne is “one of the most complex roles I’ve ever played,” which means there are indeed forces at work beyond his understanding and this is perphaps the reason he talks to donkeys. Max Payne does a lot of looking surly while John Moore’s camera swirls around him, interwoven with the usual Mark Wahlberg dim confusion. In the end, Max Payne commits a cardinal sin of the action movie genre, especially a movie with the stylistic building blocks to really make something truly special.

Sure, there’s some eye candy, but Max Payne, sadly, is just plain boring.