Max Payne (2008)

Directed by: John Moore | 125 minutes | action, drama, thriller, crime | Actors: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Ludacris, Chris O’Donnell, Donal Logue, Amaury Nolasco, Kate Burton, Olga Kurylenko, Rothaford Gray, Joel Gordon, Jamie Hector, Andrew Friedman, Marianthi Evans, Nelly Furtado, Jay Hunter , Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Kerr Hewitt, Stephen R. Hart, Martin Hindy, Philip Williams, Ted Atherton, Katie Odegaard, Rico Simonini, Pj Lazic, Conrad Pla, Sergei Nikolich

Making a sequel to a successful film is always a difficult and daring task for directors, producers and screenwriters. The same goes for bestsellers and successful games. Because can the success of the predecessor be matched or even surpassed? Of course we have examples of successful film adaptations such as ‘Atonement’ and ‘No Country for Old Men’, which left a crushing impression on the film world. ‘Max Payne’ already did that in 2001 in the game world. Absolute highlights of the game were a particularly intense atmosphere, the revolutionary bullet time and the fantastic title character Max Payne, who is looking for the killers of his wife and newborn child in a gritty, film noir-esque world. Unfortunately, ‘Max Payne’ is unable to continue the success of the past…

Starting with the most important factor of the great success of the video game: the atmosphere. Because as dark as ‘Max Payne’ is, the film never really comes close to its predecessor in terms of atmosphere. Of course we simply cannot expect everything, because certain atmospheric elements from the game can hardly be integrated in a film adaptation. Unfortunately, the elements that the director and producers did have at their disposal don’t really come into their own. As Mila Kunis mentioned in a prior interview, the film is pretty dark, but falls short in the noir quality. In addition, for example, the music is nothing like that from the game. We can say that the story here is clearly more important than the experience, while in its predecessor it was really the other way around: Max Payne hardly knows how to distinguish himself from a ‘normal’ action film…

Fortunately, the story has largely remained the same, with a slight deviation from the original here and there. Debut screenwriter Beau Thorne also adds an extra ingredient: supernaturalness. The characters have to deal with various demonic apparitions, culminating in the monster Valkyrie. Each and every one of these apparitions are annoying side effects of the drug Valkyr. The references to Valkyrie and the old Scandinavian mythology are nice, but all in all, Thorne’s ingredient doesn’t help the film, purely because the game preserved some kind of reality. The film deviates mainly on that point.

What about the protagonist himself, the embittered antihero Max Payne? It’s up to Mark Wahlberg to get through this difficult role with flying colours. Unfortunately, this Max is only a shadow of the mythical hero he is supposed to be. There is no real one-man show, because the attention is too little on Max Payne and too much on the sometimes superfluous peripheral figures. Furthermore, Mark Wahlberg himself does not really convince. Max can hardly be called cynical, is not grim enough and has too many emotions. Too bad we have to conclude that so much of its captivating character is lost.

What if we don’t compare ‘Max Payne’ with his great source of inspiration, but watch it as a film in itself? Then he can be called nice. The plot is well put together, easy to follow and the film contains an acceptable amount of action, with some nice bullettime moments for dessert. In addition, we are dealing with a main character who is really not afraid of anything, something that is subtly reinforced somewhere in the film by a poster that reads: ‘Show them no mercy!’ Max certainly doesn’t intend to: in his search for the killers, he goes to extremes!

What we were already a bit afraid of, has unfortunately come true: ‘Max Payne’ also fails to break through ‘the curse of the successful predecessors’. As a film in itself ‘Max Payne’ is quite nice and therefore probably still quite manageable for those who are not familiar with the game hit from 2001. Compared to its oh-so-successful predecessor, however, the film is mediocre and therefore not recommended for fans. Where director John Moore has mainly tried to make an exciting and visual film, ‘Max Payne’ falls seriously short in the atmosphere: the experience clearly does not come first. Moore jokingly called his film ‘Max(imum) Payne’; let’s keep it below average…