Scientific Movie Review: Max Payne

Background: Max Payne is based on the video game of the same name. In the movie, as in the game, Detective Max Payne is motivated by only one thing: revenge for the death of his wife and newborn child. In the time since his families murder, he has been assigned to the cold case department, where he sits in gloomy emo darkness until finally a lead comes his way. Will Max use this new information to finally come face to face with the man who destroyed his life? If you have ever seen a movie before, you know that the answer is yes.

Hypothesis: Max Payne is the best video game movie I have ever seen.

Experiment: Ok, so let's get into Max Payne. In a lot of the reviews I have read about this movie, the critics complain about Mark Wahlberg's wooden performance as the title character. Wahlberg's Payne comes off as very unemotional, and while the big critics think that is just being lazy, I think its appropriate. Max Payne exists for one thing, and one thing only: revenge. He doesn't care about other people. He doesn't care if the cheeseburger he is eating is the best burger he has ever had. In fact, he probably doesn't even know what it tastes like anyway because tasting things doesn't get him to his goal. Max Payne should be uncaring, unfeeling, because he only gives a crap about the man who killed his family. So I think Mark Wahlberg did a fine job as the hero. I like that the movie does a good job of getting the feel of the video game down. When Max is sneaking around buildings, the lighting and overall tone of the scenes reminded me a lot of playing the game. One big thing about the game though that the movie guys got wrong was the gunfights. Max Payne has to kill a lot of dudes to discover the truth in the game, but in the movie, there are not very many action scenes. And on top of that, the game's signature, bullet time, where the action slows down and allows you to dodge bullets while getting off some super accurate shots of your own, is used only once in the movie, and it comes off as one of the cheesiest scenes in the whole picture.

Besides a pretty decent final act, the actual action is sparse, which is always a bad sign in an action movie. So we are left with the story, which is pretty muddled and really not all that interesting. It features some cliched gritty crime drama stuff like frame jobs and crooked cops and shaking down some informants for information. And there's some even more unnecessary stuff. Like when Max's old partner, played by tv's Donal Logue, gets killed before he can give Max a key piece of information. The partner's death doesn't do anything to refocus Max, he could really care less, and he gets the information anyway a few scenes afterward, so it was really needless and sloppy storytelling. Then there is Mila Kunis playing the assassin Mona Sax, who is an important character in the video game, but adds nothing to the plot in this movie.

Analysis: So I don't want to get too negative here. When the action gets rolling, its not too bad, and fairly true to the game. There is some cool imagery involving some creepy demons that you may have seen in the trailer. But, the movie does get mired down in a plot that isn't good enough to keep me engrossed in between action sequences. I wouldn't really recommend to see this one at a first run theater, but it could be a fun rental or cheap seat flick if you want some gun blazing action and don't expect anything spectacular.

In order to prove my hypothesis, I will need to decide what is the best video game movie I have seen before I saw Max Payne. Let me think here... After some contemplation, I choose Resident Evil. It's got Milla Jovovich fighting some zombies, a better story, and an evil robot. That is relatively rough competition to defeat, and Max Payne just doesn't get it done.

Conclusion: Max Payne isn't a terrible movie, but it is not the best video game movie I have ever seen. Hypothesis rejected.


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