Max Payne

There seems to be a trend of movies coming out based on video games. The first few I remember were Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and Tomb Raider. Then there was Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Boodrayne, and now Max Payne. I can't wait until Donkey Kong or Frogger come out on the big screen. I had heard a few people say how disappointing Max Payne was so I had very low expectations going in. Combining that with the fact that the movie is based on a video game I was not expecting a Shakespearean experience. What really pushed me over the edge to rent it was a free rental code at Red Box so I didn't mind taking a chance.

When I saw the preview for this I thought it looked like Van Helsing or Constantine since it showed monsters flying around and supernatural stuff in each scene. I had never heard of Max Payne and had no idea what it was about. I learned it was a story about a cop trying to solve the mystery of his wife's murder. Despite the scary special effects in the previews it turned out being more of a detective story.

The movie may not have bee that great, but one thing I did like about it was the stylized dark film noir look. I liked the cinematography and the look of the movie. The visuals reminded me of the previews I had seen for Sin City and Watchmen. I thought it was strange that it seemed to be snowing weird cotton like snow in every single scene. Maybe that has something to do with the video game?

Spoiler: As soon as I saw Beau Bridges in the movie I said to myself "he is the bad guy". How did I know that the trusted family friend would end up betraying the hero and trying to kill him? Because that is exactly what happened with Beau's brother Jeff Bridges in Iron Man. I was not going to get faked out by a Bridges that easily again.

So my summary of the movie is it had cool visuals but even a shallow guy like myself can not allow the merits of special effects to compensate for missing ingredients vital to a good movie. I did not think it was nearly as bad as I had heard it was but still it only gets a 6.2 out of 10 stars. What do you expect from a video game. At least it was not "Pong- The Final Countdown"