Max Payne [Movie]

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Max Payne [Movie]

Post by Bugle/Hawk'M » Sat Oct 18, 2008 21:39

First I would like to say that I'm a huge fan of the games. Overall, I'd say that the movie was alright. There are two major expectations one has when it comes to Max Payne: crazy action/gunplay with bullet-time, and a solid film noir story that is really well told. The problem is that the movie doesn't do either them as perfectly as the games did. The movie leans heavily on the story side, and has surprisingly little action. The action that is there is done well enough, though the bullet-time was way slower than it needed to be, the end effect on the scenes worked well enough.

The story itself was okay. It departs from the first game's script in many ways, but it follows the same basic plot, and there is a lot of familiar characters and locales. The changes are enough to keep in interesting, but if you know the game you know generally how things go. The cast for the movie is surprisingly large, but oddly enough there are no Gognittis, Vlad, or Woden (or the Inner Circle for that matter). The most surprising thing about the movie is that while it does have a solid ending, it does not have as much finality as the first game and leaves open to the sequel. I can imagine that a sequel might be made that includes the elements from the first game left out of the movie, which would be important because pretty much everything that was left out were the parts of the first game that set up for the second. So I could imagine 2 more movies, one that rounds out the story of the first Max Payne, and then another that is an adaptation of the second. Of course, the viabiltiy of any sequels depends on how much of a success of this one, and I don't know how much drawing power Max Payne has as a franchise considering how it gracefully bowed out and ended with the second game.

The thing that the movie did best was the visuals. it was spot-on, and I'd say near perfect. It looked like Max Payne. It was on the level of the Silent Hill movie when it comes to getting things looking right, and i applaud the director for that. The soundtrack was good enough. I don't think there was any liscenced music and it was all very low-key and unintrusive. I was dissapointed that they did not use Max Payne's main theme or "Late Goodbye" during the credits. My major gripe is that not enough of the story was told by film noir-style narration. There were only two parts where it was used, and it was done pretty well when it was, but I wish more of the story was revealed this way because it is more telling of Max's character and without it the movie made him seem simpler.

Overall I think that Max Payne fans should see it, but I'm not sure how much the average moviegoer would like the movie. Most of my friends that I went to see the movie with were more casual fans and they had a relatively negative opinion of it. I liked it, though not as much as the games, and it is was pretty solid.

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Re: Max Payne [Movie]

Post by Demon_Mexican » Tue Feb 03, 2009 13:01

I dont know for some reason for me the actors werent delivering. I was expecting more "shoot outs" with slow mo action in between. The setting was pleasing, but the movie overall wasnt that enjoyable.

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