Max Payne: My Thoughts

I decided to go to the movies last night and as you've probably guessed, the movie in particular that I saw was none other than MAX PAYNE.

If I could sum up this movie in one word it would be: disappointment. If given an additional word to sum this movie it would be: utter disappointment.

I will admit that I bought into the hype leading up to this movie. I saw the trailers, I looked at photos. From everything that I was hearing, this game was going to be the one! It was going to be spectacular, it was going to be the movie that brought legitimacy to video game movie adaptations and maybe cure AIDS. It did none of this and quite possibly gave me the clap.

I could stop there, but I have a lot more coal for this steam powered complain train. To quote Mario: "Here we goooooo..."

Before I rip this movie a new one, I will say that I didn't really have a problem with Mark (E. Mark) Wahlberg as Max Payne. I think he could have done a lot better with the character given proper writing.

The plot is one that we've all seen before: renegade cop is out to avenge his family. This type of plot is the cheeseburger of movie plots, you really can't fuck it up, and if you do, you're a douche. Even I can do it right, hell, I avenge my family 2 or 3 times a week and nothing has even happened to them yet. However, the folks behind the movie have managed to fuck up the tried and true renegade cop story. The plot is cliched and there is a severe lack of actual ass-kicking for a movie that is based on an ACTION game.

If Max Payne had spent as much time kicking ass as he did having flashbacks, it could have excused the cliched story and at least made it a mediocre film. Look, goldfish don't fucking watch movies, don't constantly remind me of why the titular character has taken the law into their own hands and is on a murderous rampage. Somebody already flat out said (within the first 10 minutes of the movie, mind you) that Max's wife and kid were killed. One flashback of the event in question is fine, but when you revisit it three or four times throughout the film, it just gets tired and makes me wish that somebody was dying... mainly me.

Pretty much all of the action is saved for the last 20 minutes of the movie. Now I am a huge proponent for going out with a bang, but you need to keep me interested long enough to get there! Everything leading up is either mega-cheezy interrogations or bad dialogue and flashbacks. The bullet time used poorly, probably just to increase the length of the movie for a bit. Watching stuff get destroyed in super-slow-mo was cool when the Matrix did it, but I've grown used to it being featured in every other movie since then. And watching a pair (note: not even a fucking handful) bad guys run into a corridor with guns blazing reminds me of playing a game with bad AI, it's just inexcusable. Let me think for a minute that Max might be facing a death instead of killing time until the next flashback sequence.

So if the terribly unorganized thoughts collected in this blog have told you anything, stay away from this movie. Seriously, stay the fuck away. I'm gonna go watch Silent Hill, cling to my empty hopes for Prince of Persia and pretend that this piece of crap never happened.