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Max Payne by Remedy Entertainment remains one of the jewels of video gaming on the PC, not just because as a shooter it was quite excellent. Max Payne’s real strength was the story line and voice acting, the graphic novel aesthetic, and the black noir theme that ran through the first and second games.
After Y2K, the end of the world had become a cliché. But who was I to talk, a brooding underdog avenger alone against an empire of evil out to right a grave injustice. Everything was subjective. There were only personal apocalypses. Nothing is a cliché when it’s happening to you.
Max Payne tells the story of an undercover detective whose family is brutally murdered by junkies, the shock and loss pushes Max into a spree of revenge killings, madness, and paranoia. There’s plenty of material here to make an excellent film with the drugs, sex, and violence that are integral to the plot, however Max Payne: The Movie (set for a mid-October release) looks like it may have missed the point entirely. The film is shot for a PG-13 rating, the essence of the game was so dark I’m highly doubtful it will translate into something palatable for children. When the game was first optioned there was so much potential - Shawn Ryan was hired to write the screenplay. And then it was given to Fox. And it died.
Don’t see this film, go find Max Payne 1 and 2 on Arrrr Bay instead and enjoy the story as it should be told.
