Movie Review

Max Payne

If there is any substantive thing to take from “Max Payne” it would be this: the MPAA has turned to mush and is now being run by monkeys throwing feces at each other. That’s the only way I can explain how this disgusting looking movie ever got a PG-13 rating. It’s of course based on a video game, and like most video game movies that come out every year, it's meant to be a fun little ride with bullets, guns, and bad-asses who know how to use both to fatal effect. Last year “Hitman” was the big movie of genre and I feel it accomplished what it set out to do. Which brings me back to “Max Payne." The only way I can see this movie accomplishing what it set out to do is if director John Moore ("Behind Enemy Lines") and screenwriter Beau Thorne got together and tried to make a movie that’s offensively ugly and incompetent. This movie sucks, and it sucks hard.

Mark Wahlberg usually plays good action heroes, but here he plays Max Payne, a NYPD homicide detective transferred to cold case files since his wife and child were murdered. Determined to find their killer, Max goes out every night looking for leads but always comes up with dead ends. Then a homicide detective buddy (Donal Logue) shows him the murdered body of a dead hooker killed in exactly the same way as his wife and suddenly he’s back on the right track, even getting a partner in the hooker’s sister, Mona Sax (Mila Kunis), and some help from his father’s former partner, BB (Beau Bridges). Just where there’s a dead hooker, trouble is soon to follow as soon Max is being investigated by an Internal Affairs Detective (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) for her murder and various other questionable deaths. Various discoveries are made along the way until the killer is finally revealed.

Thorne’s script is so short on explanations that it barely holds together. The movie throws drugs, hallucinations, a murder mystery, attacking birds, a devil’s army, and the cover-up by a pharmaceutical company and for the most part I felt like an ass for even trying to make sense out of anything this silly. The rest of the plot can be seen coming a mile away and the dialogue said is some of the most ridiculous I’ve heard all year long. A character says of Payne, “He’s looking for something even God wants to stay hidden.” What will probably disappoint fans, however, is how few scenes of actual action are really in the movie, and how utterly devoid of excitement those few scenes are. Moore is a hack director in every sense of the word, relying on senseless, video-game style shootouts (accompanied by vile mood lighting) that don’t thrill as much as glorify the violence. Is there a more overused action shot than turning to slow-motion to present a gun battle? Most of his computer visuals smack of being stolen from Francis Lawrence’s far superior “Constantine," except they look messier and far too overdone to really respect. And how many times can we see digitally created snow falling on the city in the dark night? This movie is style over-drive at its worst.

And the actors don’t seem to care. They seem to be approaching this movie with all the subtlety and dramatic weight of a porno. Wahlberg walks through the movie with a bored puss on his face, never digs deeper to show the character’s tortured soul, and throws out lines like he could really give a crap what he’s saying. I don’t really blame him either cause I felt the same way. Milla Kunis (That 70’s Show) is in the movie for some unexplainable reason, and she puts on her tough face in a performance that can only be described as laughable. Chris “Ludicrous” Bridges seems to be playing a detective in this movie but for the most part he just seems to be playing Chris “Ludicrous” Bridges. Amaury Nolasco (Prison Break) is a charismatic young actor who I wish could string together some decent movie roles, but that string isn’t going to start here with his performance in the role of “crazy guy who likes to stare at people and sometimes look down on them from stairwells and rooftops." I have no idea what happened to Chris O’Donnell but he’s taken a sharp decline since “Batman and Robin." Oddly, Clooney seems to have survived. And Beau Bridges comes off the best here but that’s like saying that a half-eaten hamburger in a bag full of trash is the best.

What really bothers me about movies like this is that it's all just violence and how best to package the violence in enticing, simple-minded wrapping paper. The villains are a collection of junkies, prostitutes, pimps, killers, and thugs who wallow in the gutter and the hero isn’t that much better because all he wants is vengeance and blood. Both shoot their guns with as much care as if they were shooting in a videogame. Both savagely beat on other people, sometimes doing it till death. Is there a difference between the two? Are we supposed to care here or just watch the bullets fly? Why is it that a movie featuring characters that are just violent and bloodthirsty can get a PG-13 but a movie that dissects the violence and ideas of vengeance like “Unforgiven” gets an R? It doesn’t make sense to me and it sends out the wrong messages. I wish the MPAA would learn that.

Craig's Grade: D

A	10.9%
B	41.8%
C	31.8%
D	15.3%
F	0.3%