Max Payne: Amazing Graphics, but Lacking Plot

By Connect2Mason Writer Emily Culley.

What do you get when you mix a gruesome video game from 2001, with actor Mark Wahlburg, director John Moore, and a PG-13 rating? Max Payne, a very violent, drug crazed, spiral into the world of an ex-homicide detective, whose wife and young child were brutally murdered three years prior.

For starters, the movie downplays the gruesome deaths of the wife and child. Rather than having the blood, guts, and gore, the movie opted for a more visually pleasing, clean and peaceful death. In the three years since his wife's brutal murder, Max Payne has spent his nights feebly tracking down her murderer.

All leads go to nowhere, until Max Payne meets sexy vixen Natasha Sax, whose death leads Max Payne into an entangled web of drugs, the mafia, hallucinations, and an odd connection to his wife's last days.

Visually speaking, this film is dead on. The graphics are amazing, the winged demons coming from nowhere are artistically done, the weaving in and out of the screen to deceive the characters, while intriguing the audience to know more about the plot. The tone of the movie is reminiscent of a video game, which in this case is a great step in the right direction.

But still, there is something lost in the translation. Especially with a case line up including, Beau Bridges, Mila Kunas, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, and a couple more somewhat memorable faces from recent sitcom shows.

The plot and the character development fail in comparison to the graphics and cinematography of the film. According to those who have played the game, some of the character development was lost from the transition.

Grade: B-