Max Payne the film, opens tonight in theaters nationwide,
starring Mark Wahlberg and Ludacris. It’s based on the 2001 videogame
which was a loving amalgamation of all geeks hold dear. We offer up
this remembrance of Max Payne, or…”Why Max Payne was so damn cool.
In 2001, a game hit the scene that tried (largely successfully) to capitalize on the recent success of The Matrix
that blended Hong Kong movies, mythology, and comics together into a
fairly solid package. An ‘M’ rated package, which was worth every
penny of its rating.
The acclaimed third person shooter was first released for PC by Remedy
Entertainment (produced by 3D Realms and published by Gathering of
Developers) before porting over to Xbox and Playstation 2 later that
year, and finally hitting Macs in 2002. Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne hit in 2003 to…well, less than stellar reviews and a very awkward shower sex scene.
And now – seven years later, the movie.
So what’s the story about, and why do older PC gamers get a little misty-eyed when the name comes up?
Throw in a Punisher-esque origin with a murdered wife and daughter
brought down by junkies from the Mafia along with some Norse mythology
(!?) and you certainly have all the individual premise points you need
for a solid action story, don’t you think?
Basically, the story runs like this – Max’s wife and baby (chilling
scene – seriously) were killed by junkies high on a new drug called
Valkyr, which saw Max transfer from the police into the DEA. Within a
few years, Max is working undercover as part of the Punchinello crime
family (the chief traffickers of Valkyr). They discover he’s a cop, and
the game’s afoot. Crosses and doublecrosses, along with the Russian
mob, twisted drug-induced dreams, and military ties all play a role in
the unfolding of the story, which ultimately leads to a showdown on the
top of a skyscraper.
What was different about the game was that the moody story was told
through a narrated noir graphic novel, written by Sam Lake, who also
provided the modeling for the lead character. A panel at a time, and a
mix of drawn art and photography Fumetti-style, this was an interesting
way to tell the story, instead of cutscenes that were starting to
pollute action games at the time. These graphic novel snippets gave the
basics of the story, identifying elements like Valkyr, the designer
drug spreading across the city, Alex Balder (whose name should sound
familiar to Norse mythology fans), Alfred Woden, Ragnarok, and the
Aesir. There are direct references to several mysteries and noir,
including then recent hits like The Usual Suspects. That last reference isn’t name-dropping or hyperbole – Max Payne was one of those rare games which emphasized the story over the action and “kewl” effects.
A side note – the movie trailer shows more than a few supernatural beings flying around. Er…yeah. Max Payne
- okay, aside from the drug overdose scenes – was virtually all
real-world in your face grit. No flying people. In fact, the game was
so…normal in its approach and scope that to pass the final level and
win, you (as Max) had to shoot guy wires to bring an antenna down on
top of a helicopter.
Guy wires.
Game creator Lake took a massive number of influences to make Max Payne,
and pulled it off. The game felt like a blend of “playing” a dark
graphic novel and a noir HK actioner again, with a strong story.
As for the gameplay itself, as mentioned earlier, Max employed true “bullet time” as made popular for American audiences in The Matrix.
Press a key during a fight, and time slowed down to a crawl, allowing
impossible shots, ducks, rolls and punches. Occasionally, when a
character was killed, you’d get a slow, glorious shot that showed the
character’s death in bullet time.
Oh, and ammo virtually never ran out.
While elements like the bullet-time slow-mo mode and cinematic deaths
have been repeated several times since this game’s release, few, if any
have taken this narrated graphic novel concept (aside from Max Payne 2,
of course). In fact, it has more in common with the motion comics now
being made than it does with most video games’ story sections. What was
brought on by budget concerns (“graphic novel” pages were cheaper than
cinematics) turned out to be a style people remembered from the game
almost as much as bullet time.
Already, the movie has seen a number of reviews mention that the movie
seems more like a comic/graphic novel adaptation, and this is largely
why. With the actual story already laid out in this method, all
filmmakers have to do is fuse the comic-style story telling with the
Hong Kong action sequences, slow down time in a few scenes, and voila,
you have an accurate adaptation of the game. While the story at heart
is a bit cheesy, with the Norse elements combined with Noir
sensibility, there was enough there to keep a gamer’s attention in
between massive gun fights, and to actually add to the overall
experience.
