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Max Payne: There's an army of bodies under this river, people who ran out of time, out of friends. I could feel the dead down there, reaching up to welcome me as one of their own. It was an easy mistake to make.
Detective Max Payne works cold case, why some people might ask, only unsolvable cases come by his desk and rarely do they get satisfaction. There is a reason behind this, Max wants to help solve the case of his dead wife and child, who were killed in what seems like a random break and enter. Max goes on a manhunt and realizes that bodies are piling up because of some new drug that is being used on soldiers to make them feel invincible. Max gets in deeper and finds out a lot more about this drug and its wild hallucinations. They see a dark angel, known as the Norse Valkyrie. Max with the help of a new friend whose sister was killed, is trying to expose the secret of Valkyr.
This movie is based off of a video game, and in Hollywood these days it is common knowledge that video game based films are a major turn off. Sometimes they are even just plain old terrible films. They are glorified action thug movies, where the main character go do and say what he/she pleases and escape death. And yes Max Payne does mould itself to fit the criteria of the stereotypical action flick where the good guy escapes death on thousands of occasions. Yes Max Payne exits a building where he takes three bullets and lives, yes he avoids being shot in major shootouts and yes he is the reason many people are killed, and yes he even escapes from a frozen over river, where apparently according to the quote above there are many a dead bodies floating. Max Payne is one man that manages not to fins himself floating in the river for the rest of time, so apparently Max Payne has friends and didnt run out of time.
Mark Wahlberg is what people would define as badass, a mean looking, shoot out, take bullets, fly high kind of guy. Ok maybe not fly high, but when people look at Markie Mark, they automatically say “That guy could live through a shootout” If anyone who in Hollywood could live a hard life like Max Payne the choice would be Whalberg. He isn’t what people would call a shy, awkward type. Whalberg is self dependent, and he reflects that in every work he does. He takes it upon himself to make sure a film is brought forth as maybe not the best film ever, but a good decent effort where he could be talked about. Max Payne may just be that film, this may be the film where a lot lacked, except for his performance.
Not very many big name stars were in this film other than Mark Wahlberg. Mila Kunis, better known from That 70's show as Jackie and from Family Guy as Meg. She doesn’t have all that much to her credit, maybe the recent Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a decent film. Other than that fans may think she playes just a decent role as Jackie on That 70;s show. She did a good job in this film as the badass female and has grown up a lot since the start of That 70's show in 1998. She was only fifteen and the youngest of the cast. She proved herself to some degree beside Mark Wahlberg, and to be fair they only had her a not so very known actress because they didnt want anyone to steal the show from Wahlberg. I was glad to see her sort of rival as his female counterpart. She is able to play her part, with ease and she does have a future as the potentially badass Hollywood female. I don’t know stay tuned for more information.
As far as the story goes, it plays like a cheesy comic book film, with scenes that are set up to make the audience know what is coming next, there is nothing really surprising about this film. How it plays out is obvious and a few scenes come off as terribly cheesy and somewhat uncalled for. For example a seen where Natasha the sister of Max's female friend is at his apartment and she is looking for nothing but a lay. It is uncalled for scene for the director has Olga Kurlylenko as many people know from the newest of the Bond series running around topless acting like a tramp. Yes a terrible word to use, but that is what they were making her do. She was topless, shown from the back in order to be a cheesy tease to all the men watching the film. A terrible way to exploit females in the film. Nudity is a major part in films, and sometimes it is unavoidable and sometimes it is good to see a film just let it pass and not exploit females as tramps and objects. She even goes as far as to tell Max he can call her by whatever name he wishes. I kinda wanted to laugh at the way the words sounded. That was a terrible scene, one of the worst I have seen in a long time.
Max Payne plays out with no surprises like just mentioned, but even when doing so it still remains a decent film. Nowhere near a great film, and nowhere near the greatest film of all time, but a good effort.
4/10
