Max Payne on Film (1 comment)
I really liked both Max Payne video games, so I was disappointed to see their motion picture adaptation widely panned. I rented it from Netflix last week and I was amazed at how badly it missed the mark.
It feels like an existing script was changed to incorporate Max Payne characters and locations by a screenwriter who didn't appreciate the source material. Actually, it feels like the screenwriter read the games' plot summaries on wikipedia and called it a day.
The video game story is pretty simple. Eponymous Max is a detective with a good life that's turned upside-down one day when his wife and daughter are murdered. The circumstances of the event set Max at odds with his colleagues at the police force, so he embarks on a one-man vendetta, plowing through the city's criminal organizations and uncovering an increasingly bizarre corporate conspiracy that's ultimately responsible for his loss. Right from the start, Max is an action hero. It's a shooter game, after all.
The movie takes a different approach, attempting to replace the action with dramatic tension. That lasts until an arbitrary point near the end of the movie where Max starts shooting everyone he sees. The cause for his radical change in behavior is never revealed to the audience.
All of the individual actors played their roles capably. Mark Wahlberg doesn't really have the voice to match Max's gruff video game narration, but I didn't have any problems with his performance. It's an awkward situation where everyone seems to have done as well as they could with what they were given, but the script was simply too weak for the performances to pull the movie up. In concept, it's similar to how I felt about Crash, but with disappointment taking the place of loathing.