Max Payne Reviewed on Blu-ray
By
I was watching "Max Payne" when my wife entered. "Is this based on a video game?" she asked.
It's that obvious, that dismaying: someone who didn't even know there was a video game called "Max Payne" immediately recognized the movie for what it is: a transposition from game to movie. But it's reportedly not a good transposition; an executive of the game company condemned the film upon seeing it (but later hastily back-pedaled).
The movie is basically junk with a lot of improbable gunplay. The game itself is of the variety known as "third person shooter"--the player takes the role of the leading character, firing weapons at will. There's no first-person camera work here; that is, no shots where we're supposed to be seeing through Max Payne's eyes, which always seems intrusive and forced.
Not that the movie isn't intrusive and forced anyway, plus wildly improbable. In one scene, NYPD detective Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is engaged in a gun battle with a squadron of armored guards who are equipped with high-powered assault weapon. Max runs across an open office, returning their fire with his 9mm automatic. He's never hit, though walls and windows behind him are riddled with gunfire. But his own aim, even while leaping through the air, is sure and deadly. Director John Moore is clearly using the Hong Kong action films of John Woo as his model--and just as clearly falling miles short of achieving his goal.
The movie is very thinly plotted; it's not as complex as the video game seems to be, but is instead another weary one-damned-thing-after-another action movie. As indicated, the main problem with the action scenes here is that they're wildly improbable; unlike its models (John Woo and the 'Matrix" movies), it doesn't first win our attention and interest, then plunge into scenes we want to believe because the characters and/or story are involving and engrossing. You don't connect to Max or any of the other characters; there's nothing original about the plot. You simply sit there and watch. Action and nothing else had better satisfy you, because there's little else in the film of any interest.
The trailers made extensive use of mysterious bird-winged bald men with claw feet who flap down out of night skies (there doesn't seem to be a daytime shot in the movie) to attack people. They're gaunt and vicious, somewhat resembling Edgar Rice Burroughs' Wieroos. You might be as surprised as I was to learn these are (a) hallucinations and (b) Valkyries of Norse mythology, winged warriors who are, one and all, women. Here, they're obviously men.
Max Payne now works the Cold Case department, but we gradually learns his heart and soul are devoted to discovering who killed his wife and infant son, and why. After a battle with three would-be muggers, he is drawn into a case centering on the dismemberment murder of a woman who unsuccessfully tried to seduce him. His former partner (Donal Logue) sees similar tattoos in crime photos of that murder and of the murder of Max's wife, but he, too, is torn apart before he can tell Max what he knows.
On his own, Max reluctantly teams up with Mona Sax (Mila Kunis), sister of the slaughtered woman. This leads to more deaths and an investigation of Aesir, a pharmaceutical company where B.B. Hensley (Beau Bridges), a former cop and once partnered with Max's late father, is now the head of security. The very thin plot develops almost imperceptibly, but ends up including internal affairs cop Lt. Jim Bravura (Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges) and Aesir executive Jason Colvin (Chris O'Donnell). Behind all the deaths and action is a new drug called Valkyr; it's intended to make soldiers super-strong and super-loyal, but does that to only 1% of the test subjects. The rest go insane, complete with hallucinations (the Valkyries).
Director John Moore has done a few other visually stylish but dramatically lackluster and uninvolving movies, such as the remakes of "The Omen" and "Flight of the Phoenix." The non-sequel "Behind Enemy Lines" was no better. He clearly thinks that achieving a distinctive look for his movie is the most important goal of a director. Got news for you, chum--it's not. John Woo's astonishing action movies featured characters, however melodramatically conceived, the audience cared for, and put them in situations where not just their courage but their integrity are imperiled. Moore just puts his characters in situations; he doesn't seem to care if the audiences give a damn about them.
It's dismaying to see Mark Wahlberg give such a frozen-faced performance; throughout the movie, he wears the same grimly thoughtful expression, and never indicates emotion through voice or movement. In movies like "Zodiac" and (especially) "The Departed" his characters were vividly delineated, completely convincing in their contexts. Max Payne--a silly name--is just an unchanging automaton, clunking through the story's required paces. We never care whether he lives or dies.
Cinematographer Jonathan Sela does great work, given the limited palate he's been given, and the perpetual nighttime of the story. This time, instead of the all-pervasive bluish tone that seems to be the flavor of the month for action movies, there's an all-pervasive greenish tone; this isn't any better, but at least its different. Daniel T. Dorrance's production design is highly detailed but grimly gritty, as well as snowy. Unfortunately, the ice on a frozen river is all too obviously wax.
But that's detectable primarily because this high-definition print on the Blu-ray disc is so sharply detailed, all the way from adjacent to the camera to the farthest reaches of the concrete canyons of Manhattan. The movie consistently looks great; too bad there's nothing very interesting to see, except for those (CGI) Valkyries and occasional orange bursts of something (Hell? Ragnarok?) trying to crack through into reality.
This disc has particularly impressive sound, and a whole lot of it. The sound is rich and ripe, as detailed as the photography, and makes inventive, creative use of the surround features of 5.1 presentation. It's almost a demonstration disc for the sound systems of home theaters. Too bad the movie itself isn't worth watching.
There may be some interesting details in the extras, but the disc including them was inexplicably unplayable on my system. I have a relatively recent player (Panasonic DMP-BD55) which has played all discs unplayable on my previous player, a Samsung.
