MAX PAYNE : A MOVIE REVIEW

Max picks up party gal at snitch's wingding.

Max Payne and Mona Sax are a firepower-packing duo.

This film has a stylized, often slightly metalic look to it. This has a certain resonance with the protagonist’s name and modus operandi. Mark Wahlberg has been virtually type-cast as a toughguy maverick. He may be an outlaw or an officer of the law, but in either case he takes care of business according to his rules. Hence, even as an outlaw, he is merely outside their law–not his. As an officer of the law, he does not let legal or police department procedures get in the way of his personal rules of justice. Max Payne is a sort of vigilante within the police department. In this he calls to mind the Al Pacino/Robert Da Niro duo in Righteous Kill (2008). In the Max Payne case the moviegoer is coaxed into sympathy, as his wife and child were murdered, while he was out writing parking tickets (or some other mundane police work). This hurts. This embitters. This induces the thought of seeing that justice is served upon the malefactors.

 Max Payne has himself transferred to the hidden-away room where the “cold cases” are maintained. As dedicated as a monk to reams of ancient scriptural parchments was Max Payne to the “cold cases.” He was certain that the one overlooked clue needed to solve the murder of his wife and child resided somewhere in the dry, cold pages in the secured room behind his desk. Max Payne was a man on a mission. He barely tolerated the presence of his fellow cops, and they did not welcome his company.

Mark Wahlberg looks like he might be a cop. However, he doesn’t act much like a cop. He’s not loud and full of wisecracks. He doesn’t clump together like cheerios with other cops. He’s at odds with his old partner, whom he partially blames for allowing the murders to happen.

All of these elements would tend to make the film seem to be a “dark study” of an injured (in the heart) cop and how he “works out” the problem(s) that haunt him. However, this film is one that is suffused with spiritism. You see, folks, Max Payne has visions. In an “other-worldly” lighting he sometimes sees and “discusses” his situation with his deceased wife (Marianthi Evans), as she cares for their deceased child, usually in a homelike setting. The issue usually is: Should he give up the flesh and join her or abide longer? She usually counsels him, “Not yet, Max.” There are some loose ends that have to be properly tied by Max.

Parenthetically, why does Max see his wife in a familiar, homelike setting? Well, that is where he knew her and felt that she belonged and where he felt she was most happy. At any rate, who can envision Heaven?

Besides this seemingly authentic vision by Max, there are other visions which others experience, which have the character of delusions blended with para-biblical demonology and Teutonic mythology.

Now, a parallel storyline, which will bend and converge with the mission which engages Max Payne, involves a large corporation name Aesir. It is likely to be the sort of company that has its fingers in many pies, but for this film its mainly depicted as a member of the “military-industrial complex,” of which D. D. Eisenhower warned his fellow citizens. You know the kind: filled with Richard Cheneys and Donald Rumsfelds. This company, Aesir, has worked to develop a biological mechanism which would unleash the super-warrior lurking within “G.I. Joe Mensch.” Naturally, the chemical proves to have side effects. In perhaps 1% of men the chemical does produce a stronger, faster, quicker-healing soldier. However, for the rest, the chemical proves to be a “bad trip.” The inoculated men have hallucinations, become suicidal, and extremely edgy. Invariably, they begin to “see” dark, winged beasts–dubbed “valkyries”–but which are also likened to angels of death.

There is also an associated myth involving the “proper way of the warrior.” Men who die ignobly are taken away by the demons to a place one may call ‘hell.” For those men to whom the chemical proves transforming into an ultimate warrior, this associated myth reenforces mentally and spiritually what was physically achieved by the chemical. Incidentally, the Aesir company logo is stylized black wings. The “valkyrie” or “angels of death” also sport prominent black wings. Furthermore, all the superwarriors, “failed projects,” and sundry associated people and things wear this logo as tattoos or designs. I will note that Stephen R. Hart, the actor playing the tattoo artist/shopowner, executed a memorable, allbeit brief, scene.

This is an urban based film. It opens with a narration inwhich Mark Wahlberg tells of his present situation and hints of dark deeds. Meanwhile, the moviegoer sees a man struggling at the surface of a body of water, He is tied and weighted. He seems to give in, submitting to the inevitable: he would join the army of dead at the bottom. Indeed, as he sinks, the bodies below make a seemingly eerie welcoming committee. Then, there is a camera cut to Max Payne’s city. He there. He’s a cop. Don’t get in the way of his mission.

The Film Capsule: A detective named Max Payne enjoys his job as a police detective. He enjoys a good relationship with his partner of some years. Then his life is derailed, and nothing will ever be the same again. He comes home to find his beautiful wife and child murdered. He blames his partner in part for this in the sense of not finding the killers and breaks up the team. He is obsessed with finding them and bringing “justice” down upon their heads. He eventually gives up his former police deparyment work for command of the “Cold Case” Department. He devotes his time to sorting through the data in the cold case files in a pen behind his desk. He knows that somewhere in here is the clue that will solve the murder of his wife riddle. There is a seemingly unrelated story going on involving a company named Aesir. It is run by a cold, ruthless sort of woman, whose behavior seems similar to a crime-family boss who wants the dirty deeds he orders to be done to be very remote from and legally untraceable to him. She has a security chief to shield her. Her company makes “modern super-warriors,” actually. Their mission is to design ultimate fighting men for sale or lease. Unfortunately, to find a few good men, they have to filtered out a horde of men of a lesser cut. These human debris live marginalized lives in the urban jungle, trying to deal with the “bats in their belfries.” Well, strictly speaking, they’re angels of death. Or Valkyrie. Or demons. Or something–hmmm–ELSE! They are black, winged and demonic-looking. Maybe they are real, or maybe the are hallucinated visions conjured by brains that stepped off the plane years ago. Whatever. As Max Payne goes out on the solo to pound and pressure informants (snitches) into redoubling their efforts to find him a lead, he stumbles across a gaggle of hoodlum types at a party thrown by one of his snitches. One is Jason Colvin (Chris O’Donnell), who is shirtless, allowing the moviegoer to inspect his low bodyfat which is partially obscured by tattoos. Among those dark lines of body graffiti he discerns a pair of stylized, graceful black wings. He’s not the only one. Present also is “Natasha” (Olga Kurylenko). She is a tall, shapely gal in red. She’s a pretty woman. Moviegoers may remember her from Hitman (2008), in which she played a similar party girl. She takes a fancy to Max, and goes forth into the night with him. She can’t imagine that he won’t “check her out” real closely. To help him out, she gets nearly naked. Max, suddenly thinking of his wife on that same bed, tells her to get out, which she does, while taunting him with her incensed, mocking horselaugh. At the party Max had also met Natasha’s pistol-packing sister, “Mona Sax” (Mia Kunis). They will team up, after Natasha is killed/suicided. Folks, she was lapping up the blue elixir of Aesir, too. Names such as BB Hensley (Beau Bridges) and Alex Balder (Donal Logue) crop up, as Max’s pursuit of his wife’s killer(s) gets warmer. On one of those solitary occasions in the “Cold Case” Department’s file room, which is his official beat, he notices some papers by his wife’s hand, he sees the logo of Aesir. Darn! Didn’t Michelle work for them? Before Max can get too far along, he is captured by hoodlums and thrown into the drink, which is the scene we encountered at the opening of the film. This time we hear Max’s wife tell him: “It’s not time, Max.” He promptly struggles his way back to the surface, as the disappointed dead reach up to him in sad farewell: “Max, we hardly knew you!.”  Almost frozen from his swim, he fishes out a vial of blue elixir which he had “impounded” earlier, and gulps it down. Guess what? He a 1% man. This stuff makes him superduper-tough. Of course, there are those darn demon critters he’s now hallucinating, but–hey!–you got to take the bad with the good. Right? Yeah! Max goes to Aesir headquarters to pistol whip a young executive who knew Michelle and some other people of interest, too, so Max could get the right answers. Well, the private army of Aesir is called into the fray. Max Payne is armed with a handgun, possibly a 45 caliber, 15-clip, semi-automatic. Hence, an army of super-warriors armed with fully automatic, 50-clip handheld weapons would have little chance. The intense battle works itself to the roof, where Max–now backed up by Mona–confronts the Aesir boss lady (said by some to be modelled on Katherine Meyer Graham and by others on Myra Lanski Boland). It takes a whirlybird, some demons, Mona and Max to sort it all out. Suffice it to say that at the end of the film, there weren’t as many people as there had been a little while ago.

All rights reserved. Gobigfoot, 2008.