Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
Years have passed since Max Payne was arrested for the murder of his family's killers. With Alfred Woden's promise to help Max get out of jail, Max finds himself back on the N.Y.P.D, where another quest will change his life once again.On a stormy rainy night, Max and Mona Sax are held up in Alfred Woden's manor as police get ready to storm the house. Before the story offically begins, Max has just been brought to the hospital with gunshot wounds and various cuts, While a hunt for Max is just begining, Max escapes from his room and encounters a body of a security guard, Grabbing his gun. Along the way, Max has hallucinations of Mona Sax as he is in pain. Max encounters a hitman sent after him and kills him. Max gets into an elevator and runs into Deputy Chief Jim Bravura who is about to arrest him for the murder of Detective Winterson. Another hitman appears and kills Bravura and then tries to gun down Max, While hiding in the elevator for cover, the hitman shoots a fuel tank and explodes in the elevator next door to Max, causing the elevator to the decend to the ground. Max emerges out from the wreckage and enters the morgue and finds the body of Detective Winterson. The scene then cuts back to Woden's Manor where the police are still waiting for their back-up as Max and Mona are still in the manor.The story kicks off in the early hours of the night. Max is patrolling the city until he gets a shots-fired call at a warehouse belonging to Vladimir Lem. Max drives to the warehouse and more shots are fired and a woman is screaming for help as he gets out of the car. Max radios for back-up and moves in. Max is at a locked door until a man in a "Squeaky Cleaning" outfit arrives.Claiming that he has no idea whats going, Max takes the man and follows him upstairs to where the shots were fired. Seeking a trap is about to take place, Max the kills the man and two more men in cleaning outfits come out and shoot at Max. Max is fighting off cleaners as he makes it upstairs to the gunshop, Max hears a message on the answering machine for the girl, Annie Finn by Vladimir. Max hears commotion in the room next door and sees Annie is about to be executed by two cleaners. Max tries to save her but they end up killing her. Max takes out the hitmen and heads for an elevator where three cleaners are waiting for it to arrive. When the doors open, Mona draws her Desert Eagle out and shoots each man in the head. Max sees Mona and the doors close taking Mona back downstairs. Max waits for the elevator to come back up and takes it down. The cleaners are trying to make a run for it in their van. As the van tries to get away, Max shoots at it as the van drives towards him. Detective Winterson shows up and pulls Max away from being hit.Back at the station, Max, Bravura and Winterson are discussing the case and its potential ties and a name given by one the cleaners "Kaufman". Bravura lets Max take the case, and gives Winterson a case involving the murder of Senator Sebastian Gate. Bravura points out there was an eye-witness during the murder, and hands Max and Winterson a sketch of the suspect. The suspect appears to be Mona, Max hesitates telling them he had saw Mona at the warehouse. At his desk, Max searches for the squeaky cleaning company and the name "Kaufman" but nothing comes up.Max figures his only lead now is Vlad. He drives to Vlad's new restaurant "Vodka", which has taken over Jack Lupino's "Ragna Rock".
With the drive to an old venue, and the fact of seeing Mona again. Max feels elation and a sense of schizophrania. Max gets to the restaurant and opens the door but it's locked. Shots ring out and Vlad is yelling to Max for help. Max runs to the back entrance of the restaurant and takes on a couple of mobsters. Max reaches the stairs to the second floor and sees two mobsters being shot at by Mike the Cowboy, Vlad's right-hand man. Max meets up with him and together, they raid the restaurant killing the mobsters until they reach the storage area in the back. Max hears Vlad shooting at Vinnie Gognitti and Vinnie instructs his crew to take out Max, Max and Mike fight off the mobsters and reach Vlad as Vinnie escapes. Max learns the Vinnie is now a criminal mastermind and has made a deal with someone powerful.Max is at his apartment smoking a cigarette ready to fall asleep as his t.v is playing "Address Unknown." Max dreams as the commentary from the show sync up with his dream involving Mona. After the dream ends, Max wakes up to a knock at his door. He goes to open it with his beretta in his hand and sees that it's Mona. Mona comes to warn Max that both he and her are in danger and that there's a contract out on them. Max threatens to take her in for the murder of Senator Gate. While looking out the window, Max sees a sniper aiming at him and opens fire missing Max. Mona takes off and escapes the apartment. Max goes to try to catch her but is side-tracked when the cleaners try to kill him. Max moves through the halls of the apartment and goes through fire escapes until he reaches the sniper's room. Inside Max finds photographs of his apartment and tape recordings of his phone calls. Max looks through a video camera and sees two cleaners planting a bomb in his apartment wired to his door. When another cleaner opens the door, the bomb detonates and sets Max's apartment to flames. Max leaves the snipers room, fighting off the rest of the cleaners. A drunk and a prostitute team up with him in the fight as he escapes the apartment and goes to look for Mona.Max tracks Mona to an abandoned funhouse based on "Address Unknown". Max goes through the funhouse until he reaches the top floor where Mona lives. Mona is taking a shower as Max enters the bathroom. She tells him that the inner circle is involved with the contracts put out on them. Mona reveals that the Inner Circle is targeting people who know of their existence. After Mona gets dressed, they head out to an office complex where she has an informant named Corkran waiting for her.As they drive to the office, Max notices a Squeaky Cleaning company van outside the building. Max and Mona go to the main entrance of the building and find that guards have been killed. Mona goes to the reception desk and looks at camera footage of the building showing locked doors, and the cleaners patrolling the halls. She offers to go up and look for Corkran but Max takes the position. Mona gives him a headset as she watches the cameras guiding Max through the building. With the help of Mona's directions, Max finds Corkran's office and finds him dead. Mona comes through and says that they have to escape. Before leaving the room, Max finds a picture with Corkran, Senator Gate, and Alfred Woden. Max leaves the office but "Kaufman" and his men get off an elevator looking for Max. Max takes them on and kills them all. Max takes the elevator back down the first floor but the police are their waiting for him as Mona is in custody.Back at the station, Max is in Bravura's office as the two get into a heated argument about the case. Max is releaved off the case is put to active desk duty. Max tries to show a connection between his case and Winterson's case, along with the involvement of The Inner Circle and Vinnie Gognitti. Winterson's phone begins to ring and Max answers but the caller hangs up. Max goes to find Winterson whose in the interrogation room with a witness from the warehouse shooting who fingers Mona out of three potential suspects as the killer. Winterson leaves to go talk on the phone, and Max interrogates the witness to get secondary information. When Max returns to his desk, he accuses WInterson of leaking information to someone regaurding him and Mona. All of the sudden the respect for Max is lost by Winterson. Max heads for the lock-up downstairs to talk to Mona. When he reaches her cell, Mona warns Max that any of the cops in the building could be on the Inner Circle's payroll. To confirm that information, Max calls Alfred Woden but gets his voice-mail. As Max hangs up, a bomb explodes in the lock-up and a group of Cleaners storm in looking for Mona. Looking through a survelience camera, Max sees Mona making her escape from her cell and leaves the station. Max fights off the cleaners and goes after Mona. When he gets outside, Vlad drives by and picks up Max. Max notices a "Captain Baseball Batboy" costume in the backseat of Vlad's car. Vlad insists that it's his ace-in-the-hole for the war Vinnie Gognitti has unleashed. Max tells him to drop him off at Coney Island where Mona's funhouse is. During the drive, Vlad makes a comment about Mona that drops the trust and respect Max had for him.Vlad drops Max off at the funhouse and Mona appears from the shadows. Entering the funhouse, Max grabs Mona and the two begin to make love. A bomb goes off somewhere in the funhouse and they hear the cleaners entering through the backdrops of the funhouse. Max and Mona make a run for it to her hide-out but the two get separated when Max falls through a dissembled catwalk, leaving him to fight off the Cleaners and make his way to meet with Mona. After successfully reaching Mona, Max and her go to a construction company where the cleaners are hiding.At the construction site, Max looks for evidence of the cleaners and hope to get leads between them and The Inner Circle. Together, Max and Mona cover each other as Mona takes postition as a sniper and helps Max against the cleaners trying to gun him down. Max and Mona agree to leave the site and Mona must meet up with him on the other side of the construction site resulting more fights against the cleaners. When Mona finally reaches where Max is waiting, Detective Winterson shows up and gets ready to take in Mona. Max tries to reason with Winterson into letting Mona go, but when negotiations fail, Mona pulls out her gun ready to kill Winterson. Winterson takes aim at Mona but a gunshot goes off before Mona can get her gun out. Winterson falls to the ground with a gunshot wound to the chest as Max looks down the barrell of his gun. Two cops hear the gunfire and make their way towards the shooting as Mona looks at Max with a surprised look. With the officers approaching, Max tells Mona to run away and Max looks at her when she does. Winterson regains a short few seconds of consisousness and grabs her gun and fire two shots at Max. Max is hit twice in the back and stumbles off the platform and falls six stories to the ground below. Winterson dies as the cops see Max go over the edge.Max is taken to the hospital and has another dream of Mona. After the dream, Max and Mona are still head up in Woden's Manor as the police make final preparations to storm the manor.Max finds himself in the morgue looking over the body of Detective Winterson, when a commando is waiting behind the locked door for Max to open it. Unarmed, Max kicks the door open and knocks the commando to the ground and Max makes a run for it upstairs. In the security office, Max arms himself with a handgun belonging to a dead security guard and Max takes on the commandos as he escapes the hospital. Max leaves the hospital with no sign of Mona, and finally gets into contact with Alfred Woden, who informs Max the truth and the real person behind the conspiracy and ordered the contracts of him and Mona: Vladimir Lem. Max uses this information against Vlad and heads to "Vodka" to look for him.Max arrives at Vodka weapons loaded ready to take on Vlad but walks into the middle of a fight between Vlad's crew and Gognitti's crew. During the fight, Max finds Mike the Cowboy and the two get into a gunfight leaving Mike dead. Vlad is no where to be found in the restaurant and Max heads down the street where more mobsters are fighting each other off. While walking through a pawn shop, Max encounters three of Gognitti's gangsters who one of them believes Max is reinforcements. Max joins the gangsters and fights off Vlad's crew until the gangsters end up dead.In a humerous but ridiculous moment, Max encounters Vinnie dressed up in the Captain Baseball Batboy costume rigged with a bomb that will detonate if Vinnie is killed or if he takes off the costume. Vinnie tells Max that it was a trap set up by Vlad and begs Max to help him in exchange for where Vlad is hiding. Three commandos approach the warehouse where Max and Vlad are. Max takes them out and the two head for the upper level of the warehouse. Matters are complicated and hardened when Vinny can't fit through one of the doors leaving Max and Vinny to go through an open lot where heavy fire is brought upon them. Max takes them all out and they head up to Vinny's place where Max seeks a collection of Captain Baseball Batboy memorbilia in his apartment. They take Vinny's car and head off to Mona's funhouse where she can defuse the bomb.Max and Vinny arrive inside the funhouse. Outside, Mona has a sniper rifle set on Vlad in his car with a detonator in his hand.Before she pulls the trigger, he pushes the button and the bomb goes off killing Vinny, and leaving Max hidden somewhere in the torched funhouse dead or alive. Mona enters the building to try to look for him. She finds the remains of Vinny's costume torched and scattered on the floor. Max is found unconsious but Mona finds him and wakes him up. Max and Mona split up to find Vlad but Max's search for him ends in Mona's hideout where Vlad and his crew have Max at gunpoint. Vlad reveals the truth behind the whole thing to Max and reveals a connection to the past that had his wife killed that has him involved in this. Vlad breaks the ties between him and Max when he shoots Max in the face and Max goes down.Max unconsious again has another dream as Mona tries to revive him. Mona offers Max to walk out since it's not his fight. Max disagrees and he wants to finish off Vlad once and for all. Max reveals that Vlad is heading for Alfred Woden's manor to finish him off. Max and Mona head out.Arriving at the Manor, Max enters through the ground level as Mona takes sniper position and covers Max. The two get separated in the manor as each of them fight off Vlad's commandos. Max finds Vlad with Woden who is about to kill him. Max interferes and now guns are drawn on each as Woden watches helpless. Mona appears and tries to kill Vlad but Vlad shoots Mona wounding her severly as Max is knocked to the floor. Max looks at Mona as she's bleeding profusely. Vlad then shoots and kills Woden and Max gets up and struggles with Vlad for his gun. Max is shot again and Vlad takes off. Max goes after him as he fights off the rest of Vlad's commandos. The battle now being mono-a-mono, the chase ends in Woden's high Obeservatory as Vlad is standing on a high platform above Max lobbing bombs at him. Max tries shooting at him but can only wound him. Max takes it to the extreme and notices the platform is held up by strong cables hanging off the sky light. Max manages to shoot the cables sending the platform and Vlad to fall back down to the manor hall on the first floor. Vlad, wounded severly and close to dying, tries getting back up claiming he was supposed to be the hero but ends up falling back down and dies.The cops arrive outside the manor and Max, makes his way back down to where Mona is dying. Max gets to her and she claims to be the "damsel in distress" and dies in front of Max. Max kisses her one last time as the cops storm in and find Max barely alive.
revenge, neo noir