Staci Wilson: Max Payne, they say, is a third-person shooter game. For those of us who are video game illiterate, what does that mean?

John Moore: I’m not that literate myself, but I guess it means that you’re always observing a character, which transfers very well to a movie because, essentially, we are passive viewers. The movie works well. You feel like you’re the character, but I think that’s what made it transfer to being a movie so effortlessly.

SW: This game is wildly popular. Even John Wu says that he’s been influenced by it. What is it about the look and the style of it that attracted you, as a director?

JM: You know, “cool” is an overrated word that has lost its meaning. Everything is “cool,” but it is is effective. It is style with substance insofar as you see things happen and you get a physiological response – your hair stands up on the back of your neck; your heart beats a little faster – that’s when you know a technique has really been effective and it’s not just something that’s cool to look at. So what they pioneered in this game (and let’s not under estimate it – these guys are way ahead of the curve) really elicits a physiological response, and there was something about that that made me want to sit in a dark theater and see that on the big screen with somebody like Mark Wahlberg.

Mark Wahlberg: I read the script, and then obviously I wanted to see how accurate the script was and how satisfied the die-hard fans of the game would be. After seeing the game, I had never seen a video game that was that elaborate when it came to the story. It’s awesome. It really is. So I thought it wasn’t like one of those other leaps of faith where you have to have the writer come up with interesting ways to try and fill in the blanks. The story is there, and it was just a matter of executing it the right way.

SW: The last time I talked to John at length, I remember he was trying to decide between Max Payne and another script. What is it about Max Payne that you think stands out for people - that they want to see this come to the big screen?

MW: For me, it reminded me of classic characters like Dirty Harry. It’s hyper-violence. It’s a lot of action. Again, you’re talking about the scum of the earth here, so people are okay with seeing this happen. I just thought, for me, it’s totally different from what I’ve been doing, and it’s just the kind of movie that I would run out and see.

SW: When you’re talking Dirty Harry, are there any catch phrases or anything like that? Any “Lucky Punks”? [Laughs]

MW: There are quite a few, and I’m glad, in this, I didn’t have to drop the F-bomb. That’s usually a defense mechanism - a different card to pull out to get you over, but we didn’t need to do that with this. The story is great. The characters are awesome. John shot the crap out of it. I would get frustrated at times.

SW: He’s very demanding, I know! I’ve seen some footage of him on the set.

MW: He’s very demanding, but the end result is well worth it. If it hadn’t been, we wouldn’t be here together today.

SW: Mark has done stuff from The Departed to The Italian Job. He’s got a wildly divergent compass when it comes to his choices for characters. How did you talk him into this one?

JM: I’m not sure that he is that “wildly divergent.” He’s always picked characters that have a certain realistic grounding. Mark has had very real-life experiences. He’s not a sheltered or pampered soul. He’s a street guy. He’s a tough guy, in the genuine sense of the word. He’s tough in body and tough in mind and tough in heart, but he’s also a very genuine and sweet guy. So if you think about every part he’s ever played, he’s had quite a seriously human range of emotions. In Max Payne, that’s essential to it. On the face of it, everyone’s all like, “It’s Max Payne. He’s just cool and calm.” He’s not. The guy is torn apart with anguish because of the loss of his wife and child. I think Mark, making a smart choice, realized that he could tap into a lot of that pain, no pun intended, and bring a very human performance to it because, if it was just flat “cool,” it wouldn’t work.

SW: For the cool factor - the bullet time - how do you tackle that without looking like a Wachowski brother?

JM: That’s a very good question, and that’s exactly what I didn’t want to do. John Wu does his thing brilliantly and the Wachowskis do their thing brilliantly. What we tried to do (if we succeeded or failed, we’ll soon know) is to make it feel integral to the action, not in and of itself a spectacle. It’s not something that takes you out of the movie and you go, “Wow! That was cool,” and then jump back into the movie. I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t realize and embrace the fact that a version of it has been done beautifully and brilliantly by Wu and the Wachowskis. What’s different about ours? I think it stays within the action of the movie. I think it stays within the emotional experience - within the moment. It’s not just another ornament technique to make you go, “Oh, that was cool.” So I hope it feels a little more like it’s in the movie rather than a hood ornament for the movie.

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