Max Payne
This is more like it--a movie based on a video game that is an honest to goodness crapfest. Max Payne is sort of a rip-off of The Punisher, about a cop whose family has been killed and he doggedly searches for the killer, getting involved with some Russian mobsters and a super-soldier serum that makes the users see large black-winged angels. And yes, Olga Kurylenko is in it, but she's killed off before the twenty-minute mark.
Nothing works about this movie. It's ugly and unpleasant, with all the actors wearing grimaces. Some of them are pretty big names, like Beau Bridges and Chris O'Donnell, who must be wondering what happened to his career. The star is Mark Wahlberg, who gets no good bounces from his Oscar-nomination in The Departed. He's grim and stoic and completely uncharismatic. Mila Kunis looks damn good as a Russian assassin, but her role seems like an afterthought.
The film is directed by John Moore. I hope that's a pseudonym.
Yeah, this would have been an unintended comedy if it hadn't been so boring.
ReplyDeleteI think these videogame adaptations fail because they never manage to make any relatable characters, only visually adapting protagonists that in the games have little to no life of their own. Instead they seem to focus on recreating the story, visual appearance and making the game levels into plot.
I liked the Max Payne games, not only because they're good action games, but because there's a certain element of meta-narrative going on where Max Payne knowingly pokes fun at himself for being such a victim of the genre he's stuck in, but just can't help it and throws himself into it with a sense of suicidal abandon. The movie missed that thing entirely and took itself far too seriously.