Warning : Being a big fan of the game, my opinion about the movie may be slightly biased.
A bad movie is worst when you can sense the meaningful intentions of its creators. Such it is with Max Payne, the filmy adaptation of a very popular action game with the same name. The latter had style class and a sensible plot around it to boast which the former completely lost its marbles over. The movie ends up playing as a peculiarly off-putting and histrionic movie that would be out of place on even the most simple and obvious action sequences. The movie is made all the worse due to the changes made in the original script.
It takes a special kind of talent to waste a wonderful plot like max payne with actors like Mark Wahlberg, Olga Kurylenko and Beau Bridges.The talented director this time behind the camera is John Moore.He successfully uses his creativity license to butcher the character, who is himself lost among the 100 things ahppening around him. You have may be a thousand plots (or was it more) running in parallel that one can hardly hold on to it.
Plot 1: Mark Wahlberg, like in the game plays the title character, a cop who buried his pregnant wife not so long ago and is seeking revenge for the sam. He’s a cop who’s been hiding out in the cold-case department, hunting for the tattooed butchers who cut up his spouse.
Plot 2: Olga Kurylenko,Natasha the hot chick from Russia whom payne meets at at a party thrown by one of Payne’s snitches. She tries to seduce Payne only to be kicked out of the house. She is then mudered by some strange looking creature with wings. She must have been some agent herself (Was she ?).A little more of her in the movie would have atleast scored on some glamor points.Okay, so Payne is caught up as a murder suspect with his wallet gets found near the diseased.
Before the cops can settle on Max as a suspect, his former partner Donal Logue is murdered while trying to pass along clues. Payne begins to wonder if the Russian’s death is somehow connected to his late wife’s murder.
Plot 3: There’s a new drug on the streets, and it’s killing the people who use it. A drug designed to increase the stamina of the soldiers ont he war front. The drug experiment goes wrong and it gives some great power to the user. The addictive drug that is taken orally which seems the focal point of the movie. At first it is quite confusing why anyone would even take this drug because it causes terrifying hallucinations in the form of winged creatures.
Plot 4: There’s Mona ,Anybody who has played the game a little bit , would join me and absolutely second my thoughts that its unfair the justification done to her role in the movie. She plays a elder sibling to Natasha and is hell bent to get some revenge herself too.
The film gets more bizarre as it goes on and gets harder to believe. By the end with visions of fiery skies, circling winged-demons and some lame dialogs(among other things), I was ready to get with my jacket to walk out.
Barring a scene with a super slow motion like in the game, theres absolutely nothing which can come closer to Action. There s another scene where the super slow motion is processed under another slow motion and that into another. Meaning its so terribly slow that over the phone, I finished a conversation and fixed up the dinner appointment with my friend after the movie but still i could see that the scene had hardly moved !
Wahlberg is cold. Direction is cold. Plot and action is cold. All in all it was a MAXimum PAIN when i finally walked out before even the credits even started.
1 out of 5
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