Max Payne: Unrated Cut (2008)

Director: John Moore

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Ludacris, Chris O' Donnell, Donald Louge

Country: Canada / United States

Rating: Unrated

Run Time: 103 minutes

Why can't a video game be adapted to the silver screen successfully? For the last 25 years, there have been numerous video game to film adaptations and each and everyone has been either flawed, decent, or terrible. In 2008, we got a film adaptation of one of my personal favorite video game series, Max Payne. Max Payne is a video game seeped in film noir aesthetics that follows Detective Max Payne as he tries to uncover why his wife and child were murdered. The series was notable for its character narration, high body count, and bullet time effects. The game screamed for an action packed film adaptation for goodness sakes. How does Max Payne stack up in the flawed video game to film adaptation world? Read on...

Mark Wahlberg takes a snapchat during an action scene.

Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is a detective who seeks the one responsible for the death of his wife and new born. As Max investigates, he discovers a new drug whose dangerous side effects are causing its users to act irrationally. However, Max soon finds that the drug's creators are linked to the death of his wife and that his allies may not be who they say they are.

John Moore's adaptation of Max Payne proved to me that some video games should simply remain a video game. The Max Payne game has very little story to it in the first place. This is explains why it is a video game. Because the story isn't that expansive, we get to play a bunch of shootouts in between each dramatic revelation. And that is fine to me. Max Payne was a just a video game and it had no other duty than to simply engage me with a decent story and some fun gameplay.

However, the film decides to take this murder mystery story and stretch it out beyond belief. There is not a major action sequence for a whopping hour! Sure there are small beats of violence here and there. But this is a Max Payne movie! This is a movie based on a game where one guy slaughters hundreds of people and we have to wait one hour before we even start to see something like it. By the time the film gets to the action, you won't care about the characters or the story anymore.

Max aims left yet nails a wall dead on.

Mark Wahlberg makes for a bland Max Payne. While he looks the part, Wahlberg sucks all of the life out of the character and reduces him to a brooding widow. In the video game, Max is also a brooding widow, but you get the sense that he is also very snarky and likable. It also would have helped if the film only focused on Max and his narration instead of jumping around amongst all of the supporting characters in the film.

This brings me to another issue I have with the film: the entire supporting cast. Man, what a bore. Every supporting character purely exists for the plot and all disappear within scenes. If you took away each character's profession, I could not tell you a single thing about their personality or characteristics. As I said before, the film would have been stronger if it chose to strictly focus on Max and give smaller amounts of screen time to the supporting players. It would be too exhausting to list all of the characters and the actors that play them too. Just wiki it guys.

I do want to single out one of the film's main villains, Lupino (Amaury Nolasco). Lupino is set up from the beginning of the film as being the leader of the druggies. We even get to watch a video tape that explains that he was once a soldier and that a new street drug has made him nearly invincible. In other words, we as an audience know that this character means business and we can't wait to see him square off against the protagonist. By the time Lupino and Max finally square off, they have the world's shortest fight scene and it must clock in at twenty seconds. What a showdown.

John Moore's "Money Shot"

However, I did not entirely dislike the film. From a visual stand point, this is a very beautiful looking action film. The night time scenes are especially notable. The dark lit sky and soft snow make for some beautiful shots. If anything, Max Payne visually screams Neo-Noir even if it can't be a good Neo-Noir.

As I stated before, the film saves all of its action for the final forty minutes. The first big shootout takes place in a office space between Max and a SWAT team. This action scene alone explains why I own this film on Blu Ray. The sound design and editing during this sequence is incredible. There is a great slow motion shot of Max running along side breaking glass windows as he blind fires his gun toward the SWAT officers. One of his bullets nails an officer in the leg and sends him flying into a glass table. Max than aims his gun at the door in front of him and fires away into it. He than leaps through the air and continues to shoot flying through the door and out of the room! Phew, what a rush.

There is also the infamous high speed shot of Max leaping backwards with his shotgun. This scene was shot with high speed cameras and it definitely shows. However, there are two glaring errors in this scene that really spoil its impact on me. The first is that Max never chambers his shotgun up again. Therefore, how is his shotgun still firing? The second concerns the henchman firing at Max from up on a ledge. The henchman aims at Max yet his bullets nail vials of drugs on the other side of the room. It makes for a great slow motion visual, but why is the henchman firing so far away from Max when he is literally right down in front of him? What could've been a memorable scene is plagued by two ridiculous logical errors.

Max does his best Chow Yun impression.

It is also extremely important to mention that I watched the unrated cut of this film and not the theatrical cut. The theatrical cut was PG-13 and had not an ounce of blood. Therefore, you must own the unrated cut in order to enjoy this film. All of the digital blood is restored in all of its gorey glory. 

In conclusion, Max Payne is a mediocre action film. Even though it takes an hour to get to the action, you won't care about the characters or story by the time you get to it. I really wish this film was a hit because it could have warranted sequels and more action packed adventures with Max. I really do love the visual style of the film and the office space shootout is one of the great underrated shootouts of the last decade. Unfortunately, Max Payne the film is a real bore. Moral of the story? Stick to the video games.

Rating: 6/10 - A slow and boring hour long climb up to the top of an action packed hill makes me recommend Max Payne as merely a rental. If you can find the film for $1, than go for it.