It’s getting increasingly difficult to like Mark Wahlberg. It’s also becoming harder not to point out that his most credible screen performance to date was playing a bad B-movie actor with a massive cock. Yes, there was The Departed, but there was also The Happening. Shooter. Planet of The Apes. Rock Star.
And now there’s Max Payne.
Our Mark plays the eponymous video game antihero (not Minimum, nor Medium, the production notes inform us, but Max Payne), a disillusioned detective who jacked in his day job after the brutal murder of his wife and child, which (remarkably, as it turns out) remained unsolved.
He now works in the bowels of the building, sifting through stacks of unsolved cases, searching for leads to his wife’s killer. He grunts at his colleagues by day, scours the streets at night, and does an awful lot of frowning.
Add to the mix his ex-partner, his father’s ex-partner, some seriously sexy gothic Russians, a handful of Universal Soldiers and a mysterious pharmaceutical company working with the government, and, if you don’t have a plot, well you surely can’t have been paying attention.
The whole thing’s about as subtle as Kerry Katona on the GMTV sofa, with plot points flagged up 2, 3, 4 times before we’re supposed to finally click. At which point, there’s a dramatic roll of thunder, flames and a loud banging noise, and the final piece of the puzzle is writ large across the screen in extreme close-up.
When I saw the cast list, I’m ashamed to say I spotted a potential saving grace in the perfectly formed shape of the two leading ladies, those sexy Russians I mentioned earlier. In Mila Kunis and New-Bond-Girl Olga Kurylenko, ‘director’ John Moore has cast two of the most beautiful women on screen today. With the finest Eastern European crumpet combined with Wahlberg’s porno pedigree and penchant for prancing about in his Y-fronts, you’d think satisfaction would be guaranteed (so to speak). Still, he fails spectacularly to have sex with either of them. Morally dubious rant over.
In the battle of the badly plotted movie careers, Wahlberg is challenged only by Chris ‘next big thing’ O’Donnell. Remember him?. Well, string me up, hose me down, dress me in rubber and call me Robin, if he doesn’t show up here, and he hasn’t even got a good part. I can only imagine they share an agent.
Despite all this, it’s not absolutely terrible. As video game film adaptations go, it’s among the best, but its not in great company. Resident Evil, Street Fighter 2, Super Mario Bros, Tomb Raider, Hitman, Doom: simply put, there has never been a good film adapted from a video game. The sensible conclusion Hollywood has drawn from this is "let’s make some more". Over the next year, we can look forward to Tekken and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and numerous others in production. If they make money, they will make more, and unfortunately game adaptations have a ready made audience that will cough up out of curiosity at the very least.
As for Wahlberg, he should have known better. As turkeys go, this came ready stuffed, shrink-wrapped and frankly he should have read the label. But it might not be too late, and while I thought We Own The Night was self-indulgent, it was certainly a step in the right direction.
He just needs look at poor old Robin, and see his car crash of a career as a cautionary tale. It may be all over for O’Donnell, but Marky Mark’s still gasping for air.
