My Favourite Movies: Max Payne

Max is a New York detective working in the Cold Case section. Years before his wife and child had been killed and the third member of the gang that killed them had escaped never to be found. Until now…. Max is onto something and follows a trail of dead bodies to a new and highly addictive drug. What he doesn’t have yet is the final piece of the puzzle that ties it all together. But he’s not letting anything or anyone get in his way to discover the truth.

On the face of it this is a pretty run-of-the-mill revenge flick. Hero suffers loss, hero discovers conspiracy, hero tracks down bad guys, hero kills bad guys, hero destroys conspiracy, and hero saves the world. You know the plot. Hollywood have produced hundreds of films with this formula – because its basically a good formula. What pushed this particular movie into a favourite movies category were the visuals. The cinematography is, in my opinion, quite outstanding. Even in the normal scenes, in the daylight, there is a brooding dark menace. It gets even better when the ‘supernatural’ elements are introduced. I loved in particular when the snow flakes became sparks and burning embers. That was a wonderful effect. I was also impressed by the sound in this film. I liked the way some individual sounds – during a shootout for instance – were isolated and exaggerated. It helped to produce an interesting scene.

One of the things that made me laugh during this movie was the inclusion of Mila Kunis who I liked in That 70’s Show and as the voice of Meg Griffin in Family Guy. I remember thinking – when she started talking in Russian (or more probably Ukrainian) with her sister played by the stunning Olga Kurylenko – that her accent sounded really good and I was impressed by her acting ability. Until that is I looked her up on IMdb to find out that both of them are actually from the Ukraine so were actually talking in their native language!

Overall I enjoyed this film very much. I watched it again yesterday and noticed lots of Film Noir references (and not just in the way it was filmed) including Noir movie posters in the Internal Affairs detectives office and, I think, a bust of Friedrich Nietzsche on his desk which is rather intriguing. This is a good solid action film but take your time with it and enjoy the visual effects more than anything else. They’re quite wonderful.