Max Payne DVD review
April 6, 2009 – 6:29 am | by Lianne Jones
I’m always apprehensive when a video game is adapted for the big screen as it seems that a lot of the time the adaptations go terribly wrong; well Max Payne proved to be no different and followed down the same road as Hitman and others that have flopped before it.
Max Payne, which is available soon on DVD and Blu-ray (April 13th), is about a rogue cop (Mark Wahlberg) who is determined to get revenge for the death of his family. He joins forces with Russian mobster, Mona Sax (Mila Kunis) who is looking to avenge her sister’s death.
They set out to hunt down the killer and find themselves investigating deep into the dark New York underworld which is crawling with conspiracy, experimental drugs and betrayal. Their mission to find the truth and discover who is behind the murders brings a torrent of violence and surprises for the pair.
The narrative for Max Payne is very flaky and confusing; the sequences seem too short and don’t knit together well. There is too little detail about Max Payne’s drive at the beginning of the film meaning that the audience isn’t able to get into the plot properly so, by the time the real action and the explanations begin, well we’ve already lost interest.
Director John Moore’s attempt at a neo-noir feel for this film seems very much out of place and just doesn’t work well with the way the story is put across. Much of the acting throughout also feels quite poor and Mark Wahlberg just doesn’t pull off the Max Payne character very well at all. All in all, it is a bit of a disaster and fans of the game will likely be disappointed.
Max Payne will be released onto DVD with a harder cut of the film and an animated graphic novel (the story of Michelle Payne) and will hit Blu-ray with the same special features and a few more extras including: digital copy, Picture in Picture feature ‘Walkthrough’s and Cheats’, commentary by the Director, Production Designer and Visual Effects Supervisor.
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