Max Payne (film)


Max Payne is a 2008 neo-noir action thriller film based on the video game series of the same name developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Rockstar Games. It was written by Beau Thorne and directed by John Moore. The film stars Mark Wahlberg in the title role as Max Payne, Mila Kunis as Mona Sax, Ludacris as Jim Bravura, and Beau Bridges as BB Hensley. The film revolves around revenge, centering on a policeman's journey through New York City's criminal underworld, as he investigates the deaths of his wife and child.
Filming took place between March and May 2008. Extensive visual effects were used in many scenes throughout the film. Max Payne was released on October 16, 2008 in Australia, one day prior to the United States release date. Reviews were mostly negative for the lack of character development and originality among numerous differences from the video game on which it is based. Despite the negative reviews, the film was able to take the top spot in the box office in its opening weekend and gross more than $85 million worldwide. Max Payne was released for home video on January 20, 2009.

Plot

Detective Max Payne is a three-year veteran in the NYPD Cold Case Unit, privately consumed with investigating and finding the murderer of his wife Michelle and their infant child. Natasha, an acquaintance of one of Max's informants, is brutally murdered and Max's wallet is found at the crime scene. Max's former partner, Alex Balder, is murdered after telling Max he suspects that there is a connection between Natasha's murder and Michelle's murder. Max then becomes the prime suspect in the case, now headed by Lt. Bravura of Internal Affairs.
Max and Mona Sax, Natasha's sister, visit Natasha's tattoo parlour, where the tattoo artist tells them Natasha's tattoo represents the wings of a Valkyrie, which, in Norse mythology, are creatures that decide the fate of warriors in battle. Max then goes to take some of Michelle's belongings out of storage and ends up discovering that documents from when she worked at the Aesir Corporation have gone missing. Max interrogates Michelle's former supervisor, Jason Colvin, in his office at Aesir and learns that Michelle was associated with a military contract to create super-soldiers using the highly addictive drug Valkyr. Only a few subjects showed positive results; the rest saw hallucinations and eventually went insane, so the project was terminated. Jason agrees to testify, as long as Max protects him from who Jason calls "the man who killed your wife": Max agrees and starts to escort Jason out of his office, but a SWAT team ambushes them, killing Jason and attracting Bravura's attention. After an intense gunfight Max escapes with the evidence and shows the video to Mona: it explains the Valkyr project – Lupino is a former Marine and his testimony explains that, while taking the drug, Lupino feels invincible, with no side effects. Max corners Lupino at his warehouse hideout, and during their battle, Max's defeat appears to be certain until BB - Aesir's head of security and Max's father-figure - arrives, killing Lupino and knocking Max unconscious as they leave.
BB explains that he is selling Valkyr and admits to killing Michelle because she inadvertently came across incriminating documents. BB plans to drown Max in the river hoping to make it look like a drug-induced suicide, but Max breaks free and dives into the icy river. He almost drowns, but hears the voice of his wife telling him it is not yet his time to die. He swims to shore and, to prevent hypothermia, consumes both vials of Valkyr, transforming into a super-soldier with visions of Valkyries. Max follows BB back to the Aesir building. Assisted by Mona, he shoots his way through Aesir security employees, eventually confronting and killing BB on the building's helipad. His vengeance complete, he falls to his knees, ready to die. He sees a vision of his wife and child, smiling. He comes to, as the sun cuts through the clouds and a SWAT team surrounds him.
A post-credits scene shows Max and Mona in a bar, reading a paper with Nicole Horne's picture on the front.

Cast

Development

The 2001 video game Max Payne was optioned by the production company Collision Entertainment to produce a live-action film adaptation. By April 2002, distributors Dimension Films and Abandon Entertainment were attached to the project. Shawn Ryan, the creator of the television series The Shield, was hired to write a script for the planned film. By June 2005, without production starting, Collision Entertainment had taken the project to 20th Century Fox. In November 2007, with a script written by Beau Thorne, Fox announced John Moore as the director and Mark Wahlberg as the title star.
Filming began in Toronto on March 2, 2008 and wrapped by May 9, 2008. Shooting the film in 35 mm 3-perf, several different areas around Toronto were used for multiple locations in the movie, including the old Daily Bread food bank building at Bathurst & Lakeshore. It took a full week to shoot just the final gunfight inside the Aesier Headquarters using more than 6,000 squibs.
Upon finding the building for the Aesir Headquarters it took eight weeks in pre-production to build the set and another week for the special effects team to install the squibs. The outside top half of the building was completely made of CG, by Mr.X, giving it a more high tech look. Using Google Earth they were able to find out the building's geometry. No location could be found for a rooftop helipad so a set was built in front of a green screen. Soho VFX attached the helipad to the building and set it atop New York City.
In order to recreate the bullet time used in the games without using a complex camera setup, the technique he used is called "Boom Vision". Moore used Vision Research's Phantom HD digital camera which takes 1,000 fps. When the video is played back, it gives the illusion of slow motion, a method of high speed photography. The technique was used for two action scenes and required the construction of a special rigging that had the camera on a propeller that spun at two revolutions per second. The crew was not allowed near it while it was being used for fear of damaging the camera or getting injured. Soho FX then blended the thousands of shots into the other footage during post production.
A contest was held between visual effects teams to see who could create the best drug induced hallucinations. A reel was shot from actual set locations, it also included footage in front of a green screen with a stand in for Wahlberg. The reel was then sent to ten different teams where Canadian company Spin created the best demo reel. To win Spin changed the falling snow into burning embers over a matte New York skyline painting. During the climactic hallucination scene, the entire room was to be torn apart from the ceiling down around Max. A camera on a track circled Max and Spin later "recreated the ceiling in CG, so it could break away and reveal the Valkyrie world above."
Moore gave the approval on Valkyrie designed by illustrators Chris Roswarne and Rob McCallum. As a point of reference and to limit the use of CG a Valkyrie suit and make up were worn by performer Mako Hindy. Moore "wanted the Valkyries to have a slow motion quality to them, almost as if they were underwater." During the 15 weeks of post-production the Valkyries were further developed by Spin to support this. Using Maya, 3DS Max, and ZBrush they were able to create the Valkyries and have control over their wings. The artists sometimes had full control over each individual feather. They had to overcome the darkness of the film as it made it more difficult to track each object. Spin also handled atmospheric CG and the CG matte backdrops elements.

Rating

Though filmed with the intention of receiving a PG-13 rating, Max Payne received an unofficial R rating by the MPAA on September 5, 2008. Moore, angered that the equally dark The Dark Knight received a PG-13 rating when Payne received an R, said "the MPAA changes their rules willy-nilly and it depends on who's seeing your actual movie at the time. It's very difficult to get a hold on what's acceptable."
On September 22, 2008, a trailer confirmed a PG-13 rating, "for violence including intense shooting sequences, drug content, some sexuality, and brief strong language." Director John Moore confirmed in an interview with GameDaily's John Gaudiosi that the film was awarded the PG-13 rating without any major changes being made to the film. Describing the re-editing process Moore stated, "We trimmed some frames more for the sake of trimming frames than anything, but we got the rating without any major changes at all."
The film is rated PG-13 in the United States, a departure from the M-rated video game series. Mila Kunis said of the tone-down, "It's incredibly dark. You still get the gist of it. The only difference between R-rated and PG-13 is you might not see as much blood. You might not see blood squirting everywhere, but as far as the sadness and the darkness of it and the distraught of these human beings is very much captured in the film." The film was given the 15 rating in the United Kingdom, for "strong violence" and MA 15+ in Australia for "Frequent violence and drug use".

Release

Critical response

The film has been widely negative reviewed by critics and fans of the video game. It has a 16% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 134 reviews, with the consensus reading, "While it boasts some stylish action, Max Payne suffers severely from an illogical plot and overdirection." Another review aggregator Metacritic gave the film a 31/100 approval rating based on 25 reviews falling under the "generally unfavorable reviews" category. Members thought that Wahlberg's acting was bad enough to be nominated for a Razzie in the category of worst actor for his work in Max Payne and The Happening during the 29th annual awards.
Louise Keller said "the most striking element is the production design..." Bruce Paterson wrote for the Australian Film Critics Association that "Mark Wahlberg is terrific in hard-bitten roles", but in a reference to the Valkyries concluded "it could have done with more of the Norse and less of the force." Critic Armond White has defended the film stating that Moore "explores genuine, contemporary anxiety his images are richer than his plots."
On IGN, Jim Vejvoda, said: "it also doesn't help that Wahlberg gives a drab performance..." and "the rest of the cast doesn't fare much better." He stated that gamers will be disappointed when comparing it to the game and even as a revenge film there is not much here. Despite this mediocre review, IGN went on to give Max Payne the "Best Videogame Adaptation" award of 2008, noting "this is how sad games-to-film have become that the only one worthy of being named the "best" of the year is a movie that we panned."
One of the harshest critics of the film, 3D Realms CEO Scott Miller, one of the game's producers, cited fundamental story flaws "that have me shaking my head in bewilderment," including the game's opening scenes being instead placed in the middle of the film. After the film's No. 1 opening weekend, however, he retracted his comments, saying that he was now "proud of the film," and that "this kind of opening brings us a lot closer to the reality of a sequel" to the long-stalled video game series.

Awards

Mark Wahlberg received a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actor for his performance in the film, but "lost" against Mike Myers for The Love Guru.

Box office

Despite negative reviews from critics, Max Payne opened at No. 1 at the box office, with $17,639,849 during its first weekend against newcomers Sex Drive, The Secret Life of Bees, and W. The film earned $40,689,393 domestically, and $44,727,512 overseas, making a worldwide total of $85,416,905. While it is not considered an overwhelming success, its U.S. gross was around the same range as other video game adaptations such as Hitman, Silent Hill, and Resident Evil. Its international gross was lower than both Silent Hill and Hitman, and it was significantly lower than that of the six live-action Resident Evil films released to date. The film also ranks eleventh in U.S. box-office gross revenues for video game adaptions.

Home media

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on January 20, 2009 and as of August 2009 generated $25,915,457 in DVD sales. All versions contain the theatrical and the uncut versions of the film, and the Blu-ray and the 2-disc DVD contain the "Michelle Payne Animated Graphic Novel" as well as a digital copy of the uncut version of the film. The uncut version features only 3 minutes of additional footage compared to the theatrical release. The most notable difference is the extra CGI blood. Only the Blu-ray release features a D-BOX motion code. It went on to receive a score of 7 out of 10 on IGN, being described as "a first-rate transfer that manages to show off the range of the high-definition format with few, if any, real weaknesses".

Differences from the game

The film is loosely based on the video game of the same name developed by Remedy Entertainment in 2001. The number of differences between the game and the film caused the CEO of 3D Realms and producer behind the game, Scott Miller, to make a public statement against the film. Miller did not approve of the fact that the film's audience does not know why Max is seeking revenge. A flashback scene where Max finds his family murdered was right at the beginning of the game, but in the movie it was shown mid-film. He was also surprised that one of the story's main villains, Jack Lupino, is killed by Hensley, whereas in the game, Max finishes the job personally. The end scene was also changed from Max killing Nicole Horne in her helicopter by shooting out the tower's lightning rods' guy wires, causing them fall into her helicopter as it is about to take off, to Max shooting B.B. on top of the helipad, which he had already done earlier in the game at the Choir Communications Garage. A large segment of the video game featuring a government laboratory producing the drug was completely absent from the film.
Many people were confused by the addition of the demonic creatures. These creatures seemingly represented Valkyries, though in Norse mythology Valkyries are female warriors and not demonic beings. Additionally, though the game makes heavy references to Norse mythology, Valkyries do not actually appear in it. The film has a much larger element of the supernatural than the game, as it is never revealed in the film if they are part of the hallucinations. Max takes the drug in the film to prevent the onset of hypothermia. However, in the game, he was forced to take it by Nicole Horne and left for dead.

Soundtrack

Beltrami made use of a detuned piano with violins, violas, and cellos. Cullen from SciFiPulse thought the score was dark and haunting, hoping the movie would live up to the soundtrack. He rated the album an eight out of ten, saying "the detuned piano really adds that sense of depth to the proceedings and makes every single track on the CD stand out." The song featured in the trailer is "If I Was Your Vampire" by Marilyn Manson.