Max Payne (film)

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Movie
German title Max Payne
Original title Max Payne
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2008
length 99 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 16
Rod
Director John Moore
script Beau Thorne
production John Moore,
Scott Faye ,
Julie Yorn
music Marco Beltrami
camera Jonathan Sela
cut Dan Zimmerman
occupation

Max Payne is a film from 2008 , the plot of which is based on the computer game of the same name , released in 2001 , in which a police officer is on a quest for revenge. Directed by John Moore ; the title role is played by Mark Wahlberg . The film was released on October 16, 2008 in Australia and a day later in the United States . The film was released in Germany on November 20, 2008 and in Austria on the following day.

action

In New York City , Detective Max Payne works in the Unsettled Archives Archives. After his wife Michelle and his daughter were murdered three years ago and he was able to shoot two of the three murderers, he was transferred there and has been trying to find the unknown third party ever since. At a party he meets Natasha Sax and her sister Mona. He notices a tattoo by Natasha and takes her back to his apartment. When Natasha makes inappropriate remarks about his dead wife, he throws her out. She steals his wallet as she walks.

The next day, Natasha is found dead and dismembered with Max's wallet, making Max the prime suspect in the murder case. His former partner Alex Balder takes him to the crime scene and tries to talk to him, but Max lets him stand. When Balder is later in his office, he realizes that the tattoo on Natasha's arm resembles that of one of the two murderers of Max's wife who were shot. Alex tries in vain to reach Max by phone and then drives to Max's apartment. When Max comes home, he only finds Alex dead, is attacked himself and knocked out.

Max wakes up in the hospital. BB Hensley, his father's former partner, sits by his bed. The two go to Alex's wake, where Jim Bravura takes Max to the station and questioned him. Then Max breaks into Alex's office and searches his desk, where he comes across the clue with the tattoos and the name Owen Green, with whom Natasha had last called. When he is walking through a run-down part of town in the evening, he is caught by Mona, who also thinks he is her sister's murderer. However, he can persuade her to find the real killer in him. They look for Green in his apartment, but he throws himself out of the window in a drug intoxication before they can question him.

In search of further clues, Max searches his wife's belongings again and comes across missing documents from the Aesir Corporation  - the pharmaceutical company Michelle worked for. Meanwhile, Mona uses her connections and is given the name Lupino and his whereabouts.

Max drives to Aesir's headquarters and questions Jason Colvin, his wife's supervisor at the time, at gunpoint, about what she was working on before her death. Colvin reveals that the company was commissioned by the government to create a serum that would make soldiers stronger and more resilient. But the drug "Valkyr" developed in the process was extremely addicting and only worked for one percent of the test subjects, while all the other test subjects went insane, so the project was stopped. Colvin promises to testify for Max if he is protected. But the two are attacked by the company's own security service and Colvin is shot. Max escapes with the evidence and drives to Mona's hideout. On a video they both see that Lupino is one of the few test persons who reacted positively to "Valkyr". Max then drives to Lupino's hiding place to kill Natasha and Alex's killer. While the two are fighting, Hensley appears and shoots Lupino. As Max and Hensley leave the building, Max is knocked down by Hensley's partner Lincoln DeNeuf.

Hensley and DeNeuf reveal to Max that they are the ones selling "Valkyr" on the street and that Hensley killed Michelle after stumbling upon documents incriminating Hensley. They want to throw Max into the river with a weight on his feet and two vials of “Valkyr” in his pocket so that his death looks like a drug-induced suicide . However, he escapes and jumps into the icy river, where a vision with his wife saves him from drowning. He climbs ashore and takes the two vials of "Valkyr" to prevent hypothermia .

Driven up by the drug and thinking of retaliation, he follows Hensley into the Aesir building. With Mona's help, he shoots his way through the guards to finally place Hensley on the building's heliport, where he kills him and thus completes his revenge. He falls to his knees and is surrounded by security forces.

In a post-credit scene , Max meets with Mona in a bar, where she shows him a newspaper article with the rising share prices of Aesir and a photo of the managing director Nicole Horne.

Reviews

In Epd Film 11.2008, Kai Mihm assumed "massive cuts during the editing" because: "No script can be that full of holes" , and concluded the article with a comment on the "title character whose existentialism sadly comes to nothing."

“However, all that would only be half as bad if 'Max Payne' didn't have exactly what the game template excelled: firefights simply don't take place until the last half hour. And even when Wahlberg is finally allowed to use the gun, there is no fanboy joy: In order to get a low youth rating, the US version was so soft that the final lead thunderstorm compared to " Shoot 'Em Up " like a coffee party works. When adapting a game designed for adults, the ultimate absurdity. At the beginning of the film you can hear Max Payne say: “I don't believe in heaven, I believe in pain!” Almost 100 minutes of styled boredom later, the viewer feels exactly the same. Conclusion: With this softened and lame attempt at adaptation, a cult game is filmed to the grave "

- Cinema

“All adaptations, be it from novels, comics or video games, are always reductions. The transfer from one medium to another simply takes its toll. But while the loss in the implementation of novels and comics can go hand in hand with a profit on another level - the visual power of the cinema can ultimately compensate for a lot - the balance sheet for films after games is almost always negative. The interactive element of the game simply cannot be replaced. In this respect, a film director does not have to make any further effort to implement a game. Once you 've accepted this fundamental failure, like Boll , you can simply roll down one mindless action and shooting film after the other and still benefit from established brand names. Of course there is another way of doing it. John Moore's extremely ambitious film adaptation of the neo-noir game Max Payne is evidence of this . But even Moore, who has established himself as one of the hopefuls of modern genre cinema with Im Fadhreuz and his remakes of The Flight of the Phoenix and The Omen , can ultimately meet neither the expectations of gamers nor those of genre film fans with this harsh big city noir. He also fails, but at a very high level. "

- FilmStarts.de

“The good news is that director John Moore, who already staged the very appealing flight of the Phoenix remake, manages to bring his own note to the worn-out melody of the lonely cop. Basically, of course, the story is completely banana, well-known and only there to bring the hero from one action sequence to the next. But the action is right, and the dark tone of the underlying video game is preserved by thankfully avoiding overly cool and ironic dialogues. The mystery element, scolded by the fans, is also successful, which is plausibly explained and visually convincing and represents a pleasing extension (even if the bonds with Constantine cannot be denied). On the other hand, it comes across negatively that the adaptation of the tough game was obviously aimed at youth approval, which makes the sex and drug scene shown about as wicked as a Britney Spears video. One would have wished for a more believable opponent than Amaury Nolasco for the cool protagonist. Nevertheless, fans of the game as well as the action film itself should enjoy Max Payne. "

- MovieGod.de

Soundtrack

The official soundtrack of the same name for the film was released in November 2008. It was composed by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Certificate of Release for Max Payne . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , October 2008 (PDF; test number: 115 588 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Max Payne . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ^ Max Payne (2008) . In: imdb.com . imdb.com, LP Retrieved October 22, 2008.
  4. ^ Kai Mihm: Max Payne . In: epd film . No. 11.2008 , November 2008, p. 46 .
  5. ↑ Cinema.de: film review