When we left off, detective Max Payne, prime suspect in two murders, finally had a lead that could solve the mystery that’s plagued his life. Everyone involved with the Valkyr drug has a wing tattoo, and so did one of the bastards that broke into his home the day of Michelle Payne's murder; it may have had something to do with the production of the drug. Alas, her personal files at Aesir Pharmaceuticals have disappeared.
"The files are missing!" "No, you must be imagining things." |
"At the time, the Payne household was so bright, it was like someone put a yellow filter on their home." |
Sure enough, next scene, we get confirmation that the higher-ups at Aesir, Nicole Thorne and her right-hand man Jason Colvin, know about Jack Lupino, the guy distributing the Valkyr drug on the street. Meanwhile, Bravura shows up at Aesir to investigate the case of Michelle Payne on his own. When Colvin arrives at work, Max is there, ready to interrogate about the last thing his wife Michelle worked on before she died. The interrogation begins amicably, but then Max rips pages from the Jack Bauer interrogation handbook: “Punch the guy until he talks.”
"Allow me to introduce myself; I'm the guy at the end of this fist. If you don't answer my questions, you're going to find yourself at the other end of it." |
Hm... an entire group of trained shooters, versus a single man. Based on all the fiction I've seen, I'm placing my bet on the single man. |
Colvin can say more, but can’t do it in the Aesir offices, so Max takes him like a hostage and also leaves with a file that contains the information on the failed super-soldier serum. But before they can leave, they come face-to-face with the SWAT team… which proceeds to shoot Colvin down. A shootout follows in which the SWAT team fails to hit Payne, and he in return kills several of them. Bravura, caught in the middle of the action, tries to reason with Max, but to no avail.
Extreme slow-mo of a guy shooting a rifle backwards? Sure, why not. |
Seeing this video of Lupino before he went crazy on Valkyr, and comparing it to what he's become, feel like the basis for one of those "Meth. Not even once." drug PSAs. |
"This is the worst movie night I've ever been to. We don't even have popcorn." |
Yep, it's like I said. This is the "after taking drugs" part of the drug PSA. |
The nicest guy was the villain all along? A lot of mystery stories pull that, sure - but they also have, y'know... CLUES! and EVIDENCE! to support the twist! |
That. Right there. Bullshit.
The only giveaway is that B.B. was quick to send a SWAT team knowing that he was likely sending them to kill Max. B.B. and Joe try to send Max drowning into the freezing river with weights attached to him, even planting two vials of Valkyr in his pocket to misguide the NYPD if they find him; but the protagonist manages to escape, jumping into the river himself to flee. Figuring he won’t get out of that alive, B.B. and his henchman leave. That wasn’t counting on Max hearing the ghost of his wife telling him that it’s not his time yet (because we needed to pile on another absurd cliché to the story), which gives him a second wind, enough to swim back to the docks.
Valkyr can reheat a human's body? Well that's new. |
McCaffrey as an FBI agent going "who are you?" to an overzealous police department cop is oddly satisfying. |
Rig a downtown building full of explosives to stop one person. Yeah, sounds reasonable. |
There. I captured as a gif the only part of the film that you need to see. |
…Okay, that shot was pretty cool.
While he’s hallucinating, he doesn’t pay attention to another guard coming closer for an easy kill, but Mona shows up and saves the detective. She goes to deal with the C4-setting Joe while Max seeks his prime target. Oh, and he’s still tripping.
The night sky has a nice shade of "burning hatred" orange right now. |
It only took an hour and 24 minutes into this film before I had something interesting to show.
B.B., you said you've come to love the taste of death so much - how about you get some of it yourself? |
Don't worry, the FBI agents are nice; if the post-credits scene is to be believed, Max is alive, well... ...and not behind bars! |
Credits roll, but wait! It’s not over! There’s yet another item we haven’t crossed off the checklist of mandatory elements of a crappy video game film. We need a sequel hook that will lead nowhere due to poor reception and box-office entries! A post-credits scene informs the viewer that Max, who has somehow escaped prison in spite of killing so many people, has allied with Mona to hunt down the CEO of Aesir, Nicole Horne.
New target acquired. |
Half the time, until the end, you can barely see the details of the "Valkyries". |
Ludacris is an acclaimed actor - he's been in many films that are so much better than this one. |
I’ve complained a few times about the dimmed colors in the film. The noir (and neo-noir) genre has a style associated to it. It’s usually a mystery with a crime to solve and clues to gather, but a part of the focus is put on every character’s moral ambiguity. Shades of grey abound. There's a way to show this through the film’s visuals. The solution isn’t to dim most of the colors and leave only a few bright ones in, such as Olga Kurylenko’s red dress or the bright blue Valkyr liquid. Or the yellow hellscape seen by Max at the end. Yes, attracting the viewer’s attention on a bright color is a good trick; but it doesn't replace good cinematopgraphy.
Hell, for a neo-noir story, this isn’t even a good mystery! Most of the details linking the wing tattoos (including the one seen on the thugs who broke into the Payne household), the Valkyr drug, and Aesir Pharmaceuticals would have been very easy to notice by the NYPD, and the Valkyr distribution ring could have gone down in a snap. To be fair, through the film, the villains do their best to keep the clues away from Max Payne, killing everyone who might say something. And in the end, who killed Max’s family? B.B. Hensley, who was set up as the one reasonable guy in the story, only to reveal himself as a scheming, monologuing, murder-happy psychopath out of nowhere! Even the reveal that he was Michelle’s murder is half-assed!
Fuck that one precise shot. I watched the film again, His face never appears in the glass during the flashback showing the night of Michelle Payne’s death. For the record, it's the same twist in the game, but there, B.B. is a VERY different character and it's more believable that he'd done it.
And to top it all off, the movie uses the references to Norse mythology as a crutch, flooding the story with them, and leading to some sort of payoff – or so the viewer would hope. We do get some cool effects during Max’s climactic drug trip, but that’s all – the Norse references are never taken further than that. All we get is empty symbolism. In comparison, the first game sets up these references and parallels to Ragnarok, the end of the world, with meaningful names and story beats, and it all pays off. To be fair, the games have a lot more time to set things up, far more time than a 100-minute movie would. Hell, the drug is injected in the games, but drunk out of vials in the film. The makers of the film didn’t even bother changing the graffiti to remove the syringes in the graffiti seen all over the place!
I really, really don’t recommend it. You'e not missing out on anything if you don't watch this one. Urgh, I feel like I need a palate cleanser after this. I need something that actually has some goddamn color.
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