Movie Review Max Payne

Max Payne (2008)

Directed by John Moore

Written by Beau Thorne

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Olga Kurylenko, Mila Kunis

Release Date October 17th, 2008

Published October 17th, 2008

Is it cynical to assume that studios only make movies out of video games because of the built in audience? No, nothing is too cynical when it comes to movie studios. The real question is: How do the studios get filmmakers to go along with a movie that is little more than a marketing ploy? You could ask director John Moore. He is the man behind the latest video game adaptation to hit video store shelves. Moore and writer Beau Thorne have taken the characters of the popular first person shooter game Max Payne and used the character names and changed just about everything else that fans of the game knew.

Moore and Thorne have made a movie with characters named Max Payne and Mona Sax but if they resemble anything from the videogame it is merely a coincidence. Since that is the case, then why waste money on the rights to the game. Was that just for the name Max Payne?

Mark Wahlberg plays the titular Max, a cop tortured by the murders of his wife and daughter. They were alleged to have died in a robbery but Max comes to suspect a more sinister motive.  He's become so consumed by the conspiracy that his career has stalled. He now works in the Cold Case department, a bad assignment we assume because his office is located in the basement of the precinct.

The story kicks in when Max gets a tip from an informant about some dopeheads. He finds them and they lead him to a party and to a girl with a tattoo that is a big clue. The girl (Olga Kurylenko) is linked to a major drug dealer (Amaury Nolasco) who may be the man who really killed Max's wife. Before Max can get anything from the girl she is murdered. Since she happened to have stolen Max's wallet and was carrying it when she was killed, he is the top suspect.

More bodies pile up, each with a link to Max. As he avoids the cops he befriends the dead girl's sister, Mona (Mila Kunis), a killer for hire. Together they hunt down the drug dealer and his supplier. The plot involves a corporate conspiracy, drugs, super soldiers and other such things, many of them actually taken from the video game. However, fans of Max Payne looking for anything to be what they remember of the game will be sorely disappointed.

The 'adaptation' was merely a ploy by 20th Century Fox to find a property with built in salability. It never really mattered that the writer and director were in no way bound to actually adapt a story people were already quite familiar with. What mattered was the name Max Payne.

Now, as someone who never played the game, I could not really care less. The efficacy of video games to movies will affect fans of the game. For me, the issues are different. Max Payne, to me is a dreary action spectacle of dull anarchic plotting and lame attempts to marry classic detective movie tropes to modern special effects driven madness.

I like Mark Wahlberg but with The Happening and now Max Payne, Wahlberg is devolving from promising star to victim of bad management and bad advice. His Max Payne is a slow witted, lumbering piece of meat with a gun in his hands. On top of that, he's also a major bummer.

That last thing isn't his fault, I might not be alot of fun if my wife were murdered by drug dealing corporate conspirators but you wouldn't want to watch a movie about me either. The script of Max Payne piles on the depressive Max by killing his family and friends and then director John Moore piles on an oppressive atmosphere of unending cold darkness.

There are allusions to Norse mythology, lifted from the videogame but also altered from what gamers remember. The allusions are supposed to give the movie (game) depth but they really just show how shallow the whole enterprise is. The depth is feigned to the point of apathy and you almost feel sorry for whoever thought such a gambit would work.

Really, I almost feel sorry for everyone involved in Max Payne. I'm not sure what they set out to accomplish but still their failure is evident. Max Payne is a dreary, ugly, dumb movie that exists because of it's built in marketability and loyal following. Whether satisfying that built in following ever mattered is a question for director John Moore or 20th Century Fox.

My guess is, Nah.

Movie Review The Omen (2006)

The Omen (2006) 

Directed by John Moore 

Written by David Seitzer 

Starring Julia Stiles, Liev Schreiber, Mia Farrow, David Thewlis, Michael Gambon 

Release Date June 6th, 2006 

Published June 5th, 2006 

666 is the number of the beast. It's also the number hiding somewhere on the body of five year old Damien Thorn. You see, Damien is not in fact the son of Robert and Katherine Thorn, played by Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles. On the day his son was to be born Robert Thorn arrived at a religious hospital in Rome to find his son had died at birth. The doctors waited till Robert arrived before telling his wife Catherine (Julia Stiles). There was however a secondary motive to not telling her. A small child was born simultaneously in the hospital to a mother who died while giving birth.

The priest in charge of the hospital makes a deal with Robert to adopt this child in secret and raise him as his own. If all of this sounds rather convenient, you have no idea how right you are. Cut to five years later and young Damien is a slightly creepy looking five year old with no outwardly sinister ambitions until his birthday. At the party Damien's nanny suddenly decides to hang herself in front of the entire crowd of children and parents. Only young Damien seems unaffected by this scene.

Following this disturbing event Robert is visited by a crazed priest, Father Brennen (Pete Postlethwaite). Babbling about how Robert needs to accept Christ as his savior, Father Brennen wishes to explain to Robert that his child Damien is actually the son of the devil. Upon Father Brennen's ghastly death a photographer (David Thewlis) makes a terrifying discovery that will lead he and Robert across the globe to uncover his sons true nature. Meanwhile young Damien and his new nanny Mrs. Baylock (Mia Farrow) set there sights on poor Katherine.

At first The Omen 2006 is a slavishly devoted retelling of the original story. However, director John Moore eventually finds his own way of making The Omen his. Through the use of some exquisite art direction, location shooting and cinematography, The Omen develops a steadily chilling atmosphere that grows exponentially more shocking and genuinely scary as the movie progresses.

John Moore's first film was a forgettable remake of the Jimmy Stewart flick Flight Of The Phoenix. That film never gave any indication that Moore had this kind of directorial talent. His eye for visual splendor in The Omen is exquisite here, where it was desperately muted in Flight of the Phoenix. Moore draws genuine scares not from the usual bait and switch histrionics of cats leaping from the shadows and music stabs but from crafting atmosphere and artful misdirection.

The film evokes the original The Omen with stars Schreiber and Stiles bringing echoes of Gregory Peck and Remick to live but never surpassing the legends from the original. Only Mia Farrow as Mrs. Baylock truly stands apart from the original film. That is mostly because of the oddity of her casting. Ms. Farrow is well known as the mother of Satan's child in 1969's Rosemary's Baby. Her casting in The Omen is a terrific inside joke for horror fans.

Because so little is changed from the original The Omen is a directorial revelation. Only John Moore's direction provides the opportunity for updating this material and that is a challenge that Moore meets and surpasses. The Omen 2006 is a visual horror nightmare that improves on familiar material with directorial flourish worthy of masters class. I never would have expected this from John Moore but after The Omen I cannot wait to see what he could do with original material.