I'm confident that I'm not the only one on the planet that has been disappointed with Hollywood's latest offering of computer game to movie conversions.  After witnessing the sheer butchery of classic game francises such as Resident Evil, Alien Vs Predator, and Hitman on the big screen I seem to have lost faith in Hollywoods ability to perform the should-be-simple conversion.  Lets just have a quick look at what I'm talking about:

Resident Evil IMDB

From a personal perspective one of the finest game francises to grace a console.  Converting Resident Evil to the big screen should have been simple as the game already has a brilliant story.  Only a total douchebag could have messed this up.  Enter Paul W. S. Anderson.  This guy seems to have a nack for taking a perfectly good computer game, and making a terrible half-arsed motion picture out of it, see Alien Vs Predator and Mortal Kombat.  I could talk for hours about my feelings toward Paul W. S. Anderson but I shall save that for a separate article.

Hitman IMDB

Hitman has been a thoroughly enjoyable series of games.  Nothing beats creeping up on some unsuspecting bad guy and grotting him with the cheese wire, all kinds of awesome I think you'll agree.  So understandably I was excited about seeing the Hitman movie which came out last year.  It's not so much that Hitman is really bad, it's just been over-complicated and didn't really have that much stealthy killing which we all love.  Badly executed (no pun intended).

 Also see Super Mario Bros and DOA.

It doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon either has Hollywood seems to be snapping up as much game real estate as it can get it's hands on.  The same can be said for the comic francises. 

Alas, a potential savouir may be on the horizon.  If you haven't already seen the Max Payne movie trailer, slap yourself and watch below:

Anyone who has played the Max Payne games knows how much fun they are.  Max Payne came out when I was in my final year of secondary school and was awesome then and is awesome now.  It's a story of revenge executed (in the game) in New York.  I intend to give no spoilers away.  People who have played the game understand how this game could be a great movie. 

What makes this movie seem like the first decent game to movie conversion is that as far as I can see from the trailer, the director seems to have kept tight to the original story line of the game.  If you have played the game you will notice the subtle but important features that appear in the game and seem to have been ported to the movie.  Even the casting is good.  Mark Wahlberg is in my opinion a great choice for Max Payne.  In all honesty, the director's (John Moore) portfolio isn't the greatest in the world.  However, if he can do what directors like Paul W. S. Anderson couldn't by performing the simple adaption from a computer game with an already solid story line to a big screen hit that stays true to its origin, then he certainly gets kudos from me.

Max Payne out 14 November 2008 (UK) IMDB

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