2001 saw the release of the third person shooter, Max Payne. It was well received by gamers and critics alike. It combined cinematic influences with everyone's desire to shoot things. With its popularity, it was only a matter of time before it was adapted to the big screen.
Although I have never played the game, it is easy to see its potential for cinematic fun. It has elements of old noir and hard boiled detective films, John Woo-influenced game play, and a look that is simultaneously old and new school. Unfortunately, as it turns out, Hollywood seemed to be more content to turn out a workmanlike product that trades on its popularity for a quick buck, with a visual style that attempts to be arty while remaining true to the game while completely ignoring the story potential in favor of a script that is more concerned with getting to the next scene as quickly as possible.
Watching Max Payne the movie becomes a game: can you find the movie influence? You can pick out flourishes nabbed from the likes of The Matrix, Constantine, Sin City, Hard Boiled, The Punisher, and more. You can gain extra points for going back into cinematic history with the detective and crime films of the 1940s and 1950s. Now, borrowing from other sources is not necessarily a bad thing. Everything is inspired by something, so similarities and outright steals are a given in the business. Problems arise when those borrowed elements are not accompanied by anything new. I want to say that Max Payne was an attempt to make something special, but I do not get that impression from the finished product.
The story centers on Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg), a detective who has been assigned to the cold case department of his precinct following an investigation that failed to find the man who murdered his wife and child some three years earlier. The years have found the man continuing to retreat into himself while never giving up the hunt. His search takes him into the criminal underbelly of a New York City where a new drug, called Valkyr, has taken hold.
Article comments