Misled a bit by Max Payne

Hi all…

Over my long weekend in AZ, I had a chance to see Max Payne at the theater. This is a movie that captured my imagination a bit through the creative trailers earlier in the year. Who wouldn’t be fascinated by the concept of valkyrie in the real world?

Well, it turned out to be not quite what I was expecting.

[rating:1.5/4]

A friend of mine told me I would’ve known that it wasn’t what I was expecting had I played the computer game it’s based on. But Max Payne came out many moons ago and I have to say I’m not much of a first person shooter kind of guy (I tend towards strategy games or RPG-style games these days), so I had no clue what I was getting myself into.

Let’s set the stage a bit here. Max Payne (played by the stoic and less than great actor Mark Wahlberg) is a detective in the NYPD. He’s been stuck managing the unsolved case files in the basement for a long time as he’s tried to track down the people who killed his wife and infant son a few years back. He’s the standard loner cop character who’s driven away nearly everybody who ever cared for him.

There’s two “big reveals” in the movie. And the second one was fine. It made sense. But the first pretty much blew the movie for me.

I was expecting something along the lines of a Constantine-ish cop movie. Sort of a “cop stumbles into some kind of supernatural battle that involved valkyrie” kind of thing.

That wasn’t the idea at all, which I might have known had I played the FPS many moons ago. Oh well.

Words to the wise — if you want to see this movie or think you might want to see it, watch the trailers again. You’ll see 90% of all the cool stuff in the movie and miss the rest.

Beyond that… It was an interesting cast even if the story disappointed. Beyond Marky Mark, we had:

• Mila Kunis as kick-butt leather girl Mona Sax (That 70s Show and Forgetting Sarah Marshall)
• Beau Bridges as BB Hensley (most recently on Stargate SG-1)
• Ludacris as Jim Bravura
• Chris O’Donnell as Jason Colvin (did a stint on Grey’s Anatomy a while back)
• Donal Logue as Alex Balder (currently on Life)
• Amaury Nolasco as Jack Lupino (from Prison Break)
• Olga Kurylenko as Natasha (Hitman and in the upcoming Quantum of Solace)

Nolasco played the crazy Lupino pretty well. Kurylenko was gorgeous as ever. And Donal Logue seems to be playing a lot of cops recently.

I have to say that this was a huge departure for Mila Kunis. Very different than Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which I’ll be reviewing soon). I would’ve been interested in seeing more of Mona Sax’s character and back story.

To make a long story short, it wasn’t a great film for me. Not sure how it made $18 million in its first week, but that should drop off sharply.

I can only give it 1.5 out of 4. Just didn’t do much for me. It wasn’t horrible, but I should have stuck with just watching the trailers.

Until next time, go see a movie.

–Fitz

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