Max Payne – where’s the bullet time?

Today I went to watch Max Payne, as having played the game which revolutionized the use of slow-motion in games, I had to check out the movie. Unfortunately it was not as great as expected, but a friend of mine who never played the games thought it was actually alright.

And that is actually true from the story point of view. The movie had slightly “remixed” the story, moving characters around into slightly different positions, though the theme is the same: Payne’s dead family, the mystery behind it, and the drug Valkyr. Honestly the remix was not too bad, just that it may have been delivered better. Sometimes I think the problem with games-turned movies is that they don’t put enough effort into delivering the story, or end up using some lousy director, which is why most mess up. Also, just one slight issue. For those who have seen the trailers, you may have noticed the weird winged demons. These were created from the hallucinations of the drug. I thought it was rather extreme, but given the remix style of the story, it was alright. I must warn however, there are some rather “corny” scenes with the usage of the drug e.g. “ultimate rise from the dead style usage.” You’ll see what I mean if you decide to check the movie out.

But the major problem was the action. I believe most people who want to watch this have some pretty high expectations of the action, and I’m afraid to say it was a letdown. Not enough weapons, probably not even enough shooting scenes, and NOT ENOUGH BULLET TIME. There was practically no bullet time, with possibly only TWO extremely short slow motion shots, which were not even in an epic form of firefight.

Overall, I’ll probably give this only a 6/10. It can actually be rather confusing and harder to follow if you didn’t play the game, so even my viewpoint may be biased. If I myself didn’t play the game, I may have seen this as some random weird movie and might even score it on a 4/10, tops 5/10.