Split-Screen :: The Game-Geek’s Daily Read

by Ravi Sinha

By now you’ve probably read one of the 70 reviews for the newest videogame-to-film adaptation based on Remedy’s infamous shooter Max Payne. The trailers for the film were taut, depicting various hallucinatory angels and stark city backdrops – a true homage to Payne noir. And with Mark Wahlberg still fresh off his award-nominated role in The Departed, what could possibly go wrong?

Impossibly, everything!

Not a single review for the movie has been positive. “A weak little sister to Sin City”. “Dark, moody, extremely twisted and hard to enjoy on any level”. “Miserable, in every sense of the word” are only a few of the choice instances of reviewers badly scarred by a movie who’s existence is so debatable, it’d not worth our while to watch it. It’d probably improve our social ratings an easy 50% if we feigned complete ignorance to the blasphemy on screen here (only enhanced by an extra end scene indicating a sequel).

So instead, we’ll take a different route. Do you have Uwe Boll, notorious director of the Tara Reid-o-riffic Alone in the Dark and the smutty sucker “WTF, why is Billy the Kid a Vamp?” Bloodrayne series, burned into your hating brain? Our discussion is really very simple: What if Uwe Boll directed Max Payne?

This could be a little difficult. Filming a direct adaptation of the game is good, but not if a slow-mo production rivaling an entire season of Baywatch is the result. Shipping Max Payne off to deep space with a SONAR and only his hatred for Vlad the commie is a no-go too. Maybe Boll should just film himself taking a bat to some one monologuing Frank Miller? No, for this dramatic adaptation, a straight-forward imagination of Ed Wood drowning in cheap German gin is of utmost importance.

The plot: Max Payne has hallucinations of rabbits for ten minutes in an over-exposed bathroom, ending in him cutting off his foot. He awakens next to a dead (and naked) Mona Sax. Immediately following his admission of luck for having scored (begrudgingly questioning the means for about half an angsty monologue), Max recounts how they reached this finale. Insert footage from the game, it’s sequel and Sesame Street for no sensible reason.

Since Mona will be played as deceased and naked most of the time, with all present-time sequences filming her figure even when Max is angsting, Jennifer Love Hewitt is a shoe-in for the role. She may insist on a body-double for those scenes but that’s easily remedied (now, which WWE Diva is about to be laid off…). Mark Wahlberg is too big for an Uwe Boll production; can you imagine the costs for this guy’s cook, trainer, masseuse, sex-slave et al with little to no emo shots?

Regardless, his resemblance to the real Payne is pitiful – like comparing Jessica Simpson to Lisa Miskovsky (oh, wait). Hence, the one and only choice for the role of Payne is David Boreanaz alias Angel from the hit Joss Whedon production.

Villains are a more difficult case. The objective is to cast some one the audience would love to see shot. Most preferably several times, or at least gibbed (and not while in a helicopter). Is it any more obvious? John Moore. Who’s he, you ask? Uwe Boll doesn’t ask questions like that.

Finding drug-addled gangsters hallucinating charred angels could be tough. Hence, all gangsters will be replaced with Canadian prostitutes. All angels will also be played by Canadian prostitutes. Hmmm. To save costs even further, Boll could cast the respective pimps as policemen. Ludacris wouldn’t mind – and the audience wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

So all this leaves are the dialogue, costumes, stunts, foul language, emotional context, funny-coloured drugs and rugged denotations. By this time, the budget would have run out. However, once Big Bird appears, everything will be just fine. Securing that PG-13 rating will also be that much easier.

Film it all in about, oh, 150 minutes, show Boreanaz brooding and Hewitt in most of the slow-mo sequences (make extreme use of the body double), preferably in a tank top or bra, if the (adjustable) plot warrants it and voila! What do you get?

The age old saying of wisdom: Things could be worse. Not in the sense of Uwe Boll screwing things up further but in his siring of even more lack-luster dud dolers. Here’s to Max Payne 2 – and here’s hoping Moore would sooner play Russian Roulette with an Uzi than ever be allowed near another virtual property again.