“Max Payne”(2008) Movie Review
“Max Payne” starts out with a brief interlude that reveals a later part in the movie where he’s drowning under water. After that it cuts back to the beginning of the film. I thought this was clever as it peaked my interest in the film even more. Ok, so Max Payne(Mark Wahlberg) is a detective who’s been hunting or working a case for three years which involves the murder of his wife and kid. The plot takes us to a night club where Max Payne meets up with Trevor(Andrew Friedman) an aquantance who he thinks is a step on the path to find his killer. Trevor introduces him to Natasha (Olga Kurylenko) which is the sister of his soon to be partner in the film, Mona Sax(Mila Kunis). After a few minutes he comes face to face with Jack Lupino (Amaury Nolasco) one of the killers in the film but he doesn’t know it at the time. He takes Natasha back to his place to get more info out of her . After he does he kicks her out of his place.
From there she walks the street and proceeds to get killed by what appears to be some huge dark flying birds. I’m still not quite sure what that was about as it never really gets fully explained except that it was some type of Hallucination from a drug she was on .We see that Lupino has something to do with it as he was watching her the whole time. Max Payne’s old partner,Alex Balder(Donal Logue) works the investigation and secretly pulls Max aside because he finds Max’s wallet lying next to the the dead girl and wants to make sure he is not framed for the murder. Alex proceeds to find a connection between Natasha’s death and the death of Max’s wife because they both knew about something that the murderer didn’t want them to know . A secret military drug that went bad and caused all kinds of hallucinations.
Since Alex made the connection of the two murders he was then killed. Again Max is looked at as a suspect for the murders. Now it gets really interesting as he starts to seek extra hard to find out what’s going on. He again comes into contact with Mona Sax who’s pissed off at him because she thinks he might have had something to do with her sister, Natasha being killed since he took her home that night. He convinces her that it’s not him and that he has some information that may lead to the real killer. So they team up together to find him. After alot of gun shots fired,high action scenes,and deceptions revealed he finds out that it’s his apparently close friend, BB Hensley(Beau Bridges) who he used to work with on the police force was the one who murdered his wife and kid. This leads to more gun shots and chasing which has Max Payne ending up at the bottom of a river drowning which was the brief interlude we saw at the beginning of the movie. This time though we see that Max gets a second wind, gets out, and inacts revenge on the one responsable for his wife,kid,and friends murders with the help of Mona Sax.
I personally loved the movie. I wasn’t bored for one second. Mystery and detective movies always keep me guessing and this one was that, amplified.
I give Max Payne “two thumbs” up. Anyone interested in alot of action,mystery,and just outright entertainment should go see this one.
