Max Payne

Okay where do I begin, I feel as if I just came from the friend of a girlfriend’s baby shower. You know what I mean? You go there, you smile and meet all the people who you’ve heard your girl talk trash about before you could associate a name with the face. Like hey Trish, yes you are the one who slept with Tasha’s husband and oh hi Cindy, you are damaged goods and oh Veronica you’re probably going to try and sleep with me and well you get the point. Then you sit through the torturous session of “awww” and “oh my god that is so cute”, and you want to make a b-line for the next room to turn on Sports, anime, porn, or hell ANYTHING just not to sit through it. You think to yourself “guys aren’t even supposed to be at these things”, but you haven’t slept with her in a few days and you know she’s gonna keep the lock on it if you don’t play nice… hoping and hoping that it will soon be over and then the shower lasts the whole friggin evening. That is Max Payne.

The positives in my opinion was not so much the Frank Miller feeling duo-tone that covered the movie or the clown whore make-up on Milla Kunis and Olga Kurylenko but the sound… and I don’t mean music, I mean the bullets… they literally sounded scary. I can appreciate when they make a gun sound scary because if you have ever heard a real gunshot you will understand that there is nothing cute about it, when that dog barks it makes you want to duck and cover for your life and I felt as if Max Payne’s gunshots conveyed that very well.

The negatives begin first and foremost with Mark Wahlberg, every time this guy does a movie it feels like Dirk Diggler trying to do his Brock Landers and Chest Rockwell skits on Boogie Nights… I just don’t feel it. His tough guy act is as compelling as his good guy act in Planet of The Apes, meaning it was not compelling. Mark just comes off as an a-hole, no matter what part he plays and I really cannot pinpoint what it is about him that makes it so distracting and hard for me to accept him as any character he plays. The Max Payne dynamic of an aching husband who is hellbent on revenging his wife and kid… just isn’t there. Not once did I feel the remorse of his loss and that in itself is sad.

What really made this movie a stinker was the difficulty I found in taking it serious. It did not feel like a videogame, and it did not feel like a movie. What should have tipped me off was when I saw that half of the new cast of NBC’s Heroes was in it. I mean maybe they brought the bad writing with them… makes you ponder right?

And let’s not forget the friday theater experience… the lover boy trying to “do” his girlfriend in the seat in front of us, the troglodytes in the back row telling each other to shut up but lacking the balls to “make” it happen. The couple with the newborn… SIGH and of course teenie bops. Nuff said, there is a reason why Matinees and early previews rock. Avoid Max Payne like Herpes, it is that bad folks…

Written by Greg Dragon – who has written 364 reviews on Spicy Movie Dogs.

Cinephile and opinion writer, Greg Dragon has been a fan of movies since the 80's when Kung Fu theater was all the rage and Roger Moore was James Bond. As an opinion writer that has reviewed Box Office releases on a number of prominent websites, Greg is the founder and lead critic of Spicy Movie Dogs.