It’s a Pain Alright.

Max Payne

I don’t know what made me think this was going to be a good movie. Video game movies have a horrible track record of being complete crap. There is a long list of these movies including Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Doom. This movie didn’t fail to disappoint.

For those of you who have never played the game, like myself, Max Payne is about a cop who is on a quest for revenge for the murder of his wife and child. That is the main story. But there is another convoluted story that includes Russians, valkyries, and drugs.

All the actors play their roles like it is community theatre. They are wooden with a complete lack of emotion. Mark Wahlberg comes across like a brooding teenager not like a grieving husband and father. Mila Kunis doesn’t seem tough as…I don’t know; she is just some chick who is supposed to be badass. They never really explained who she was or what she does. She just has connections and guns. Beau Bridges comes across as tired or maybe bored. And Ludacris comes across as a joke. His big entrance into the movie was supposed to be dramatic but the whole theatre burst into laughter.

The director, John Moore, tried to be stylistic with a muted film that seems almost black and white except for in flash backs, intense close ups, and using slow motion sequences (aka bullet-time) like in the game. All of it is just wasted and comes across incredibly…lame. It tries hard to be like Sin City in many areas but falls short by a huge margin.

The worse thing about this movie is that it is not a bad film that you can laugh at like some of the other video game movies. It is simply tiring to watch. There are clear inconsistencies that were driving me mad, horrible plot devices that made it predictable, and a lot of things that were simply unnecessary and pointless.

This is a movie that is a complete waste of time. It hurts to watch.

Tra