Max Payne

Introduction

Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is an ex-homicide cop who works in the Cold Case office. Most cops who end up down there have made career halting decisions, but not Max. He's there because the death of his wife and child and still unsolved and this is where he picks through unsolved cases looking for a lead that will put him on the right track. Although none ever appears.

A chance meeting with Russian beauty Natasha Sax (Olga Kuryenko) at a party where a new designer drug is imbibed by numerous guests puts him on the trail, but not before the still grieving Payne rejects some sex from Sax (stupid boy...) that just hastens her death from some flying shadowy creature from above. Although Sax is now in a dozen pieces, she also managed to snaffle Payne's wallet and this is found and recovered from the scene by his ex-partner, to whom Payne hasn't spoken since his wife's death.



After death of said partner, Internal Affairs comes calling in the shape of Lt Bravura (Ludacris) and it's only the protective arm of Payne's father's ex-partner BB Hensley (Beau Bridges) that keeps Payne from being taken in. Hensley is now head of Security at a big drugs company that may or may not be involved in this somehow, as is the way of these films.

Also, Natasha Sax has a younger (much younger by the looks of things...) sister called Mona Sax (Mila Kunis) who's a hard ass Russian assassin dudette with a range in big guns and attitude. Initially wanting to kill Payne, who she blames for her sister's death, she quickly realises that it had nothing to do with him and joins forces to do....something...And all hell breaks loose in NYC in winter, where it's snowing and the river is iced up...

Special Features

A couple of Making Of featurettes that are really just there to remind everyone how street Wahlberg is. To be fair to him, he's brought a couple of friends up with him and looked after him, and also seems a bit of nice guy from rough beginnings. But the whole Rochester homey thing starts to get annoying after a while...



Michelle Payne: Graphic Novel - this is essentially the back story to the death of Payne's wife. Graphic novel is not the right word, it's essentially a animated feature in the style of a graphic novel, presumably because they thought that a static feature would be too boring but also didn't have the budget to animate it properly...

Overall

Computer games are rife for film adaptations and there have been a few of them over the last few years. This makes sense when you realise that the video game industry has now overtaken the film industry in terms of artistic input, budget and sales. Unfortunately, the movie industry hasn't learnt the one lesson of video game adaptations to date: most suck. And this one is no exception.

The basic premise is a good one and Wahlberg is actually OK as the main character. What doesn't help him though is a lame script and poor supporting actors. Mila Kunis looks more like a school girl dressed up for a night out and pretending that she's way older than she really is, rather than the cool assassin she's supposed to be. Her character is also wasted as she appears and then disappears, not seeing out the film to the end. Beau Bridges plays the support role in a rather wooden way, I expected better from an actor of his capability. Ludacris is just that.



The main problem with this film though is the central premise. It appears that the script writers either couldn't decide what the film was going to be or decided it would be OK to mislead everyone from the start. Initially it looked as if there was some kind of supernatural element to this film, turns out though that this is just the hallucinatory effect of the drug being used. The whole thing around the drug is completely mishandled as the information passed to Payne in the latter part of the film doesn't seem to tie in with that at the start.

Not good.