Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

As you all know, video game to movie translations never translate well at all.

It's like using Babelfish. You might type in:

"Excuse me, where is the bathroom?"

But what it gives you translates to:

"Excuse you me please, I need to poo on a happy hobo yes?"

They never work out, and they ALWAYS seem to fail miserably. So it is to my utter shock and amazement that Max Payne...is no different.

It absolutely sucks.

Plot: I'm not sure.

Okay, I'm PRETTY sure that *I* know the plot - because I've played the Max Payne video games. But to someone who has never seen or played the games, I'm positive that the storyline was harder to follow than one of those "Billy Paths" drawn by Michael J. Fox...

I know.

I'm going to hell.

But you're all coming with me.

Plot: (Take II)

Max Payne is a cop with a past. (Which is stupid to say because everyone has a past. That's how time works. Duh.) His wife and baby were killed in a break-in and one of the murderers was never found or captured. Back on the job, he takes on unsolved crimes in hopes of one day finding his wife's killer and bringing him to justice. It consumes him and casts a dark shadow over his life that contorts his face into a mask of anger and sorrow.

Either that, or he just has to poop *really* hard.

WOW. Are WE ever burning on a Monday.

Max Payne won't rest until he's brought his family's murderer to justice, even though he has alienated all of his friends and fellow police officers with his obsession.

Summary: Marky Mark runs around talking in Christian Bayle's Batman voice and looking like he's either going to punch you in the face or excuse himself to the restroom. Throwing in some badly butchered and explained Norse mythology, angsty dialogue and suspiciously clean New York City snow, the movie takes you on an endless journey through the darkness of one man's life.

Or at least it FEELS endless because the movie just drags on.

They did nothing to capture the true darkness of the character or the video game. And while I do realize that switching from game to movie is anything but an "easy" transition, they altered both the plot and the character too much. I'm not a purest in the sense that I wanted it to be like watching the game, but when you change the protagonist's personality, the journey doesn't make as much sense as it should.

In the video game, Max Payne was DARK.

He had lost it all, and had nothing more to live for. In his mind he was already dead, and in his journey to meet death, he was going to take out anyone who had anything to do with his family's brutal murder. He used drugs to remain focused, stay alive long enough to finish his quest, and was a heavy drinking crack head. He wasn't just addicted, he was constantly using drugs in order to live.

He became what he hated the most in order to get close enough to what he hated in order to kill it. In the end if he lived or died it didn't matter, as long as he achieved his goal. You couldn't feel sorry for him because he didn't feel sorry for himself. He chose a path and he barreled down it like an elderly driver through a shopping mall.

But the Max Payne of Hollywood land?

You just wanted to smack him, invent a time machine, go back to his "Funky Bunch" days and tell him to PULL UP HIS GOD DAMN PANTS.

Hollywood cleaned him up too much. He wasn't using drugs or doing illegal things in order to get closer to the villains - HE was the victim. If he was associated to the bad guys it was an accident and if he was perceived as the bad guy, it was a frame job.

His eyes often filled with tears upon remembering his family, he was clean and sober, and when he finally DOES use drugs in the film, it isn't to dull the pain or survive...

...it is so that he can become He-Man and kick the snot out of the bad guy.

Conclusion and Rating: It sucked.

Had I not played the games, I couldn't imagine how I could follow the plot. It jumped from cliché to cliché in a whirlwind of cut scenes and broody looks. Trying too hard to be "dark" it comes across as a Sin City wannabe that fails miserably at capturing any true darkness of either genre or character.

Plus, in a movie, the name Max Payne is just silly.

During a scene in the film, he is told that he only causes suffering and sorrow to everyone he knows, to which I thought:

"DUDE. His name is MAX PAYNE. What in the HELL did you expect? His name is MAX FRIGGING PAYNE. Guys with names like that don't give you bunnies and balloon animals."

Rating: (D-) Two paws down, and I'm going to go huck my copies of the game into the garbage.

If you liked the games, don't see the movie.

If you never played the games....

...don't see the movie.

Unless you have a Marky Mark constipation fetish. Then yer gunna LOVE it.

-Coyote

(Monday Pimpings: AVAST YE is up and ready with the newest comic! C'mon, go and read and make us famous so that someone will make a crappy movie based on it!)