'Max Payne' Preview Disappoints in a Hail of Gun Fire

I hope there is more to this flick than just generic shoot outs

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Saturday, July 26th 2008 at 9:06 PM

Photo: 20th Century Fox

I haven't taken a look to see what other websites are saying about the Max Payne portion of Fox's Comic Con panel on Thursday, July 24, but you can consider me completely unimpressed. Dollied out for the presentation were director John Moore and stars Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges and the panel was moderated by producer Erwin Stoff.

Stoff began the panel quoting Moore saying what he believed to be the best description of what a film adaptation of Max Payne really is. He said, "John [Moore] put it best when he said 'It's not minimum pain, it's not medium pain, it's Max Payne.'" Sorry, but cheese dick taglines like that sound gimmicky every time you hear them.

Following a bit of banter they previewed the first clip from the film, which looks like it may be the opening of the film as Wahlberg as the title character, Max Payne, is searching what appears to be an abandoned house searching for someone named Alex. As he shouts like bulbs flicker in his face and a mirror in the distance is banging around with a dead body lying on the ground in front of it, half-way in a doorway, the other half in the hall. Payne nears the body when he is attacked from behind. Max Payne is getting his ass kicked. Crawling slowly across broken glass and about to be hit once again, he turns and fires several shots from an ankle holster and kills his attacker. End scene.

This clip was mildly atmospheric, but it wasn't impressive by any means. It felt like any other glossy teen thriller. It lacked substance and it lacked any kind of real originality. A zombie could have appeared or vampires could have fallen from the ceiling and it wouldn't have been shocking. The scene really brought nothing to the table in terms of giving the audience any reason to get excited, and it appeared it worked to that end.

The second clip they showed was a bit better as it featured Payne entering a men’s room in an underground subway station. He's followed into the room by three thugs, intent on mugging him for his watch. However, Payne apparently knows these kids and despite having a gun against his head he plays it rather cool. A quick flash and he is taking out the guy with the gun while the one he is there to see runs into a bathroom stall, the third man runs out the door leaving only Payne and one scared shitless criminal.

Payne tosses the one gun into the trash and pulls out his own, proceeding to blow the bolts off each bathroom stall until he finds his prey. Crouching near him he pulls out a picture of a woman and begins his interrogation. End scene. This one was certainly an improvement over the former, but it really started to confirm just how PG-13 this film is actually going to be. On the panel they keep talking about hardcore it's going to be, but it felt like fluff to me based on what I was seeing.

One final piece of footage shown was more of a montage style trailer set to the music of Led Zeppelin’s "Whole Lotta Love" with a primary focus on a shootout in an office building. Several shots of this scene can be seen in the first trailer that was released and it was nothing more than a one-man-against-the-mob style scene as Max Payne is in a gun battle with several SWAT team members and he is managing to avoid all their gunfire (except he may have been hit in the shoulder, I couldn't quite tell) while Payne manages to take out the necessary baddies as he makes for the hallway door. Glass is exploding everywhere, but hardly anyone is getting hit despite the onslaught of bullets. End scene.

This final montage was the capper for me telling me this film may ultimately be entertaining on a "B-" level, but that doesn't really satisfy me considering what I have heard about the hard edged source material. They even tried to give us some sort of bullshit of how they are using some new kind of way of doing an alternative to the "bullet time" style of shooting, a la The Matrix, with some new kind of Phantom camera that shoots at 1,000 frames per second. This basically boils down to saying, "Our bullet time is better than your bullet time and it too is a gimmick."

Of course, these are just empty words and this was just preview footage. Then again, you would think they would come equipped with their best shit, and if is their best then I worry about the final product.

However, there is one thing to take into consideration and that is that they still didn't show Mila Kunis in action as the assassin Mona Sax. Kunis also eluded to a scene in which she kicks Wahlberg's ass and in commenting on her character she seemed quite excited to play the role saying, "I get to kick some ass in five-inch heels." She's definitely looking good, but can she pass as an assassin? I wish I could tell you, we will have to wait until October 17th to find out. The teaser trailer is below in case you missed it.

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