Max Payne.
Oct. 19th, 2008 10:14 pmThe movie, not the game.
So: ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL AND EXTREMELY WELL DONE, for the first half. Sure, the dialogue is a little clunky, but it's Max Payne - it's meant to be half Raymond Chandler and half Will Eisner. And, visually, it's stunning. They don't miss a bet with the consistent and well-done fire and wing imagery, every time you see a number (on ANYTHING - street sign, precinct number, door number, graffiti, anything[1]) it's counting down, and even the softly falling snow acts more like ash in how it blows and it piles and how it stays. There's snow even on the running cars - mere internal combustion can't stand up to the art director, in this movie, and that's a good thing. Oh, and things are consistently Norse, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who's played the game or, well, watched the first half of this movie.
The second half, well - the first half is really, really, really good! Really good! And that's all I have to say about the second half.
Well, okay. If you insist: The second half feels like they ran out of time and budget, and they rushed. The dialogue goes from "a little clunky" all the way down the scale to "downright atrocious. No human would ever speak those lines". The lovely little "numbers are always counting down" thing disappears almost entirely, only to be remembered five minutes from the end (at "11") and then never seen again. The subtle wing motif in the light and shadow? Gone, there's just the real wings left. The plot? Explained in "as you know, Bob" expository lumps. The action? Pretty, but scenes range from ridiculous to anticlimatic without ever passing through "good".
And the mythological themes that tie the plot of the first half together? They're dropped pretty much wholesale, after Ragnarok[2]. And, unfortunately, that's not where the movie ends.
(And, frankly, the film suffered from a crying lack of Alfred Woden. He really did kind of need to be there. Spoiler: He wasn't.)
The verdict: Oh, man, the first half was really good. It's not like Will Smith Versus The Vampire People, where the first 90% was *perfect* and the last 10 minutes were unwatchable utterly inconsistent crapulence - the crap in Max Payne is longer, but it's much less bad. It's just a kind of generic action setpiece movie with nothing special to speak for it tacked on to a *very* nice buildup towards something better.
PS: Things I thought of when writing and then forgot to write originally:
* so, there's a new drug on the street that makes people high and fearless and makes them hallucinate, and there's graffiti related to it *everywhere* - and yet the cops have never heard of it?
* and it's distributed in test tubes clearly marked Aesir Pharma and yet nobody thinks to look at Aesir?
* and all the graffiti is straight from the game, meaning it's got syringes. And yet, the movie drug is taken orally.
* there are many police-related errors in this movie. This is one of them.
[1]: In a scene that feels like it was inserted after the fact, there are prices on a diner menu that don't hold this pattern. But that's the only one I saw, and I was watching for it.
[2]: If you don't know what I'm talking about, just trust me when I say that what I just said makes sense.
So: ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL AND EXTREMELY WELL DONE, for the first half. Sure, the dialogue is a little clunky, but it's Max Payne - it's meant to be half Raymond Chandler and half Will Eisner. And, visually, it's stunning. They don't miss a bet with the consistent and well-done fire and wing imagery, every time you see a number (on ANYTHING - street sign, precinct number, door number, graffiti, anything[1]) it's counting down, and even the softly falling snow acts more like ash in how it blows and it piles and how it stays. There's snow even on the running cars - mere internal combustion can't stand up to the art director, in this movie, and that's a good thing. Oh, and things are consistently Norse, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who's played the game or, well, watched the first half of this movie.
The second half, well - the first half is really, really, really good! Really good! And that's all I have to say about the second half.
Well, okay. If you insist: The second half feels like they ran out of time and budget, and they rushed. The dialogue goes from "a little clunky" all the way down the scale to "downright atrocious. No human would ever speak those lines". The lovely little "numbers are always counting down" thing disappears almost entirely, only to be remembered five minutes from the end (at "11") and then never seen again. The subtle wing motif in the light and shadow? Gone, there's just the real wings left. The plot? Explained in "as you know, Bob" expository lumps. The action? Pretty, but scenes range from ridiculous to anticlimatic without ever passing through "good".
And the mythological themes that tie the plot of the first half together? They're dropped pretty much wholesale, after Ragnarok[2]. And, unfortunately, that's not where the movie ends.
(And, frankly, the film suffered from a crying lack of Alfred Woden. He really did kind of need to be there. Spoiler: He wasn't.)
The verdict: Oh, man, the first half was really good. It's not like Will Smith Versus The Vampire People, where the first 90% was *perfect* and the last 10 minutes were unwatchable utterly inconsistent crapulence - the crap in Max Payne is longer, but it's much less bad. It's just a kind of generic action setpiece movie with nothing special to speak for it tacked on to a *very* nice buildup towards something better.
PS: Things I thought of when writing and then forgot to write originally:
* so, there's a new drug on the street that makes people high and fearless and makes them hallucinate, and there's graffiti related to it *everywhere* - and yet the cops have never heard of it?
* and it's distributed in test tubes clearly marked Aesir Pharma and yet nobody thinks to look at Aesir?
* and all the graffiti is straight from the game, meaning it's got syringes. And yet, the movie drug is taken orally.
* there are many police-related errors in this movie. This is one of them.
[1]: In a scene that feels like it was inserted after the fact, there are prices on a diner menu that don't hold this pattern. But that's the only one I saw, and I was watching for it.
[2]: If you don't know what I'm talking about, just trust me when I say that what I just said makes sense.