Max Payne 2008
Max Payne 2008
Director: John Moore
Writer: Beau Thorne
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Donal Logue, Beau Bridges, Chris O’Donnell, Kate Burton, Olga Kuryenko and Ludacris
Video game adaptations are a tricky thing to pull of well. For every Resident evil we get 10 Double Dragons. Max Payne I was expecting to be a horrible piece of shit, but I was pleasantly surprised. The one note acting of Wahlberg fit this character well and the visual style of the film was very reminiscent of Sin City. It also has a solid cast filling out the rest of the roles of the film. Beau Bridges is great and Mila Kunis was quite sexy and kick ass in the film as well. The film flies by at a rapid pace and plays out just like the video game, with some great hallucinatory scenes.
The plot basics are this Max Payne (Wahlberg) works in the cold case files of the police department, ever since his wife and baby were brutally killed over 3 years ago. He still looks for the killers and ends up at a nightclub and meets a girl Natasha (Kuryenko) who is drugged out and wears a tattoo on her arm of a wing. He picks her up but changes his mind when he gets her home and throws her out and she steals his wallet and she is quickly killed by what looks like a giant bird man. His ex partner Alex (Logue) finds his wallet by the body and brings Max along, and starts investigating and finds a connection between the girl and his family’s death and he calls Max to his apartment and Max gets there and Alex is dead and something attacks Max that beats the shit out of him. Soon, Max is on the run while trying to put the pieces together with Natasha’s sister, Mona (Kunis). It all leads to a conspiracy and huge gun battle that blows away all the secrets of his family’s death.
This was a great crime action flick. Moore’s direction was great and the visual style was very renascent of the game and Sin City. It is a nice comeback to the crap that was The Omen remake. The writing was good, and moved the story at a brisk pace. The actors all were great, and Wahlberg actually just had to do was speak gruffly occasionally and glare at people, which he is quite good at. Bridges and Kunis are also great, she is very sexy and capable in the action films and Bridges plays his friend who may or may not be hiding something. The action scenes are great and reminded me a lot of playing the video game. It is one of those films where you go hell yeah, quite a few times.
This one gets 4 out of 5
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