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Directed By
John Moore
Written By:
Shawn Ryan, Sam Lake, Beau Thorne
Cast:
Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Ludacris, Donal Logue, Chris O'Donnell, Kate Burton, Ted Atherton, Bill Boyd, Amaury Nolasco, Andrew Friedman, Conrad Pla, Warren Belle, Stephen R. Hart, Pj Lazic, Duncan Key, Rico Simonini, Joel Gordon, Marianthi Evans, Nelly Furtado, Jamie Hector, Siobhan Murphy, Genadijs Dolganovs
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Max Payne (2008)
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Movie Review by Thom
March 8th, 2009
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Max Painful
About 60 minutes into Max Payne's 100 minute running time I stopped the movie to prepare dinner. I was interested to finish the movie at that point; I should have just set myself on fire or something.
Max Payne features the title character (Mark Wahlberg) in a very noir situation; a loner detective type that toils away in Cold Cases trying to solve the murder of his wife and baby. He's a tough guy type too; he's so obsessed with the memory of his dead wife that he has effectively neutered himself and destroyed his friendship with ex-partner Alex (Donal Logue) for failing to solve the unsolvable case. Max shoots at whomever - and often whenever - in his quest for retribution. At various points Russian assassin Mona Sax (Mila Kunis) stumbles onto the set from her own - one can only assume - better movie.
The first hour or so effectively builds an interesting mystery; who killed his wife and baby and why, what is the significance of the tattooed wings, and what exactly does some kind of mystery drug do and how is that related to Payne's past? Characters pose ominous and often cryptic statements - "Leave that man alone," and, "he's trying to discover something that God doesn't want to be discovered; stay away from Max Payne" - that coupled with blackened, winged demonic figures leads one to believe that there is some supernatural force present; that the drugs heighten the user's awareness to the point of perceiving actual angels and demons.
But instead of answers half as interesting as the questions, what follows over the final 40 minutes is a pointlessly incoherent bloodbath of unrealistically inconsistent shootouts featuring more than a baker's dozen of murdered police officers (they can't all possibly be corrupt for Christ's sake) and "invincible" soldiers gunned down with relative ease, while Max truly is invincible under the same circumstances.
And the little moment after the credits only served to seal the sh*t smell in.
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