MAX PAYNE

US, 2008, 100 minutes, Colour.
Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Chris Ludacris Bridges, Chris O’ Donnell, Donald Logue, Kate Burton, Olga Kurylenko.
Directed by John Moore.

Another video game actioner. This one is rather lugubrious, dark, intense, a one-note vengeance journey.

Max Payne subsscribes to the Big Bang Theory: Big Guns and incessant Big Bangs.

Mark Wahlberg (stolid like a small screen cypher character rather than showing his acting abilities) is a cop whose wife and child have been killed. While working in a small, unobtrusive office, he takes the opportunity to track down the killers, especially after an encounter in a club with Olga Kuryenko (Camille in Quantum of Solace) and her assassin sister (Mila Kunis) who thinks that Max Payne has killed her.

Not always easy to follow (you probably need to be an initiate of the world of video games and play stations), the plot has Max discover a tattoo which has mythical significance (a demonic bird of prey) which leads him deeper into a government experiment with aggression enhancing drugs that went wrong. What is left but confrontations and shootouts? No peace and reconciliation here.

Surprising to see Beau Bridges and Chris O'Donnell turn up in the middle of the cover-up.

As with so many of these films, the characterisation is secondary to the production design. Here it is a CGI squalid and dark city with hallucinatory monstrous and devouring birds that offer some visual art distraction from the big bangs.

1.An action film? Based on a computer game? The computer game style, visuals, stolid hero, obstacles, overcoming them? The violence? The guns? The quest?

2.The importance of the production design: New York City but video game style, stylised? The visuals, the buildings, the interiors? The dark colour? The hallucinations, the shadows, the demonic birds? The musical score?

3.The focus on Max Payne, Mark Wahlberg and his interpretation? The policeman and efficiency at his work? The impact of the death of his wife and child? His working quietly in a back office? His vengeance quest? Seeing the tattoo, the wings? Going to the tattooist and getting explanation? The mythology? Demonic? His superiors? Jim Bravura and his help? His going to the club, seeing the thugs? His encounter with Natasha, going home with her, the tattoo? The encounter with Mona Sax? The assassin, her violence? Thinking he had killed her sister? His reliance on B.B. Hensley?

4.Max Payne and his guns, the shootouts, the explosions? His pursuing the thugs, the groups? The drugs? The revelation about the experiment? The government, the aggression-enhancing drugs, the experiment going wrong?

5.Jason Colvin, the office, Payne and his confrontation with him? Colvin and the confession, his death?

6.B.B. Hensley, supporting Payne, employing his wife? The revelation of the truth, Hensley as sinister, ordering his wife’s death? The final confrontation?

7.Jim Bravura, the contact with Hensley, with Payne? Mona Sax and her continuing her help?

8.The impact of the violent drugs, the people taking them, the hallucinations, the shadow, the wings, the birds, their deaths? Payne and his confrontation with the man who fell to his death? With the main villain, his taking the drugs, feeling supreme, dying?

9.Payne taking the drugs, the final confrontation?

10.The nature of a video game plot, contrived, government agencies, the police, drugs, experiments? Vengeance?