Max Payne: The first great videogame movie?

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Total Film talks exclusively to Mark Wahlberg about his role in the upcoming Max Payne movie

This article is taken from Total Film Issue 145 which goes on sale 5 August in the UK. To see more Total Film content visitTotalFilm.com

Last time out, Mark Wahlberg was fighting a mighty wind (The Happening). He didn’t look too comfortable… There was much brow-furrowing and air-gazing and short-sleeve shirt wearing…For Max Payne, Wahlberg is ditching the elemental for the supernatural and, in a hangar-sized suite at London’s Mandarin Oriental, he’s comically at ease: slumped back on a sofa in trainers and worryingly tracksuit-like trousers.

Max goes rogue, teams up with lady-assassin Mona Sax (Mila Kunis, in the film), infiltrates the Mob, gets framed for a colleague’s murder, takes counsel from a grizzled mentor (Beau Bridges), clashes with an internal affairs attack-dog (Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges) and, eventually, swoops down on the ice-maiden business woman (Kate Burton) he believes is the root of the rot. He’s hell bent and – judging by the twisted nightmare-visions of winged gargoyle beasties – possibly hell bound...

“The hallucinations are a side-effect of this drug that’s been leaked onto the streets,” says Wahlberg. “A lot of the conspiracy comes from that: Max finds out that it’s a drug tested by the military to create super-soldiers, but someone has flooded the streets with it. It makes crack look like chocolate. He has to take it to keep up with the fight. But yeah, there’s a definite theme of Max fighting the devils inside. There’s a lot of action in this movie, but there’s also plenty of emotion and psychology. It goes pretty deep.”

Videogame movies are blessed/cursed with a pre-built but purist fanbase. So far, the blog bitching has targeted Max Payne’s director, Irishman John Moore, who made 2006’s limp redux of The Omen. But from what Total Film has seen, it’s the action-angst cocktail of Moore’s 2001 Bosnia war-thriller Behind Enemy Lines that makes him a tight fit for Payne. If he can mesh his lust for Tony Scott-style pyrotechnics with the game’s Matrix-apeing bullet-time balletics and get Wahlberg playing to his strengths – taking Payne deeper than just feral vigilante – Moore just might have the first videogame-based commercial-critical hit on his hands.

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The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, New Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Jack Shepherd. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.