Disappointing
If you haven’t picked up on it yet, I was (and still am), a huge fan of the two Max Payne games. I think that’s a huge reason why I found the Max Payne movie so disappointing, but even had I not played the games, I think I would have still found Max Payne a very mediocre action film at best, and at worst something just a bit above Ultraviolet.
Max Payne stars Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne, a New York cop that takes a desk job in the cold case division after his wife and young daughter are murdered in their home. All leads have gone cold and the murder remains unsolved, but Max hasn’t given up on figuring out what happened. In his spare time, he chases leads and one night he goes to a party that one of his snitches on the street is hosting to try to gather some more info.
While there, he meets Natasha, a beautiful girl that may know something. She is an addict of some kind of drug, we’re not sure what at the time, but we eventually find out that it is a drug made by a local, very large, drug corporation. Anyway, she’s found dead the next morning with Max’s wallet next to her dismembered body and so the police are already very suspicious of Max even though he submits his innocence. Max’s old partner, whom Max had a falling out with after the investigation of Michelle Payne’s murder, believes him and tries to help Max. He discovers that Natasha had a similar tattoo to someone at the scene of the Michelle Payne murder. Excited to tell Max, his partner contacts Max to meet him, but he’s found dead. Max finds his list of friends and supporters growing thinner by the hour, but his determination and pursuit of the truth is unstoppable.
Max’s leads take him back to the drug corporation that his wife used to work for; he discovers that this corporation made a drug that was intended to give soldiers in the Army a bloodthirsty edge of their enemies, but this drug had a bizarre side-effect in that its test subjects became not only violently addicted to the substance, but that they also see large winged creatures and demons. One of these subjects and former soldiers is Jack Lupino, played by Amaury Nolasco, who is most known for his role as Fernando Sucre in Fox’s Prison Break series. Eventually Max squares off with Jack, security forces of the drug company, the police– much like in the game, he faces the fire of several different groups and the few action scenes there are in the movie are done pretty well, including some decent attempts at the bullet time feature that made Max Payne (the original game) so popular.
The fact that there are so few action scenes in the film is a real problem in my opinion. Frankly, much of the 100 minute film is a bore and outside of Wahlberg, the acting is pretty flat. I also thought the script was goofy and that had they just stuck with the gritty, much more realistic nature of the games, a better film would have come of out it.
Unrated Blu-ray Tops the DVD Release Anyway…
Now, Max Payne comes to DVD and Blu-ray. I reviewed the DVD release several days ago, and this Blu-ray release is similar. The Blu-ray version also includes both the theatrical and unrated versions, the unrated version being three minutes longer. I don’t really get why a release needs to include both versions; just give me the unrated version as that should mostly likely include everything in the theatrical version except for more explicit content. Besides having the option to choose both versions, there are a handful of other extras that I’ll get to in a moment.
Before checking out the extras, a word on the quality of the picture and sound: they’re quite good, frankly. The film’s visual style looked good on DVD, but on Blu-ray it’s really able to flex it’s stuff on this dual layer disc and the entire film is impressive looking. The DTS-HD 5.1 audio track does a great job too and doesn’t disappoint.
For the extra features, there aren’t many; let’s take a look:
-Audio Commentary with Director John Moore, Production Designer Daniel Doorance, and Visual Effects Supervisor Everett Burrell.
-Picture: Part 1 – This feature runs just a bit under thirty minutes, is in SD, and includes footage of the cast and crew, including Wahlberg and director John Moore, during various stages of production. We see John Moore two days before filming still trying to cast a few roles, two months after filming has started, and at various times after that. We also see lots of Mark Wahlberg and other cast and crew talking.
-Picture: Part 2 – The second part of the Picture feature is another thirty minute, SD offering that includes more interesting on the set footage and interviews about the film and acting in general from the cast. I found this second part of the Picture feature to be more intriguing and better produced than the first. Also, on the DVD release I reviewed, this feature was not included.
-Michelle Payne: Graphic Novel – An animated story that looks somewhat like the cutscenes in the Max Payne game did. It tells a brief story about Michelle Payne.
BonusView – Fox’s BonusView extra for Max Payne is a neat Picture-In-Picture track that gives you additional behind the scenes footage while watching the movie. The feature is called Walkthrough & Cheats – Making Max Payne.
-Digital Copy of the Film – A second disc in the box includes a digital copy of the film.
And there you have it; lets get to the summary…