MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Max Payne’ is painfully clichéd
“Max Payne” leads you down an interesting road in the first half an hour, but the second act is where it veers off the road, which wouldn’t be so bad if that road were not a bridge and the veering didn’t cause the movie to fall off.
Mark Wahlberg (“The Happening”) is Max Payne. A tortured soul that happens to be a cop (Side note: It’s getting harder and harder to find non-tortured cops in the movies, but I digress). He’s lost his family to a brutal murder and now he spends his time pouring over cold cases, most specifically trying to find his family’s killer.
As Payne is on the war path it seems there is a battle brewing in the city. Demonic angels with tattered, black wings seemingly appear to people with strange tattoos. They snatch the people up and dismember them. They throw them out of buildings. They seem very real.
People in the city are addicted to a neon blue substance that can be found in vials. This substance causes people to either be invincible, a few or to hallucinate, everyone else). While the filmmakers wanted the substance to play a bigger role in the movie, it seems to get pushed back and forgotten about. The movie continues to mention it, but never fills anyone in on the real need or use for it.
“Max Payne” is a video game adaption. I have never played the game, so I have only the movie to go on and it’s as clichéd as they come. “Max Payne” is a walking, talking and shooting cliché. There’s not an original bone in its body. There are less than spectacular gun battles, tiresome “Matrix-esque” slow motion and subpar CGI demon angels. There’s the bad guy and then the “real” bad guy. There’s even the villain monologue where he or she lays out his or hers most evil plan. How they thought it up, carried it out and will eventually get away with it.
Sounding kind of like you’ve seen this movie before? I thought so.
Even the most interesting aspect of the movie, the supernatural demonic angels, is not that interesting or even necessary once you find out the secret.
So in honoring this most clichéd movie, may I take from its book just a little and say: “Max Payne,” is just that. Dreadfully painful.
–aaron.peck@aggiemail.usu.edu