Mona Sax

Lore & Background

Mona Sax is a mysterious professional assassin, living in a derelict theme park on Coney Island that she set up as her base. She is introduced in the first Max Payne game as the 'evil twin' of her younger sister Lisa, the abused wife of the Mafia boss Angelo Punchinello. Mona is captured by Punchinello's assassins before she could kill him, but manages to escape. It is revealed that she was employed by Nicole Horne, the renegade member of the secret society calling themselves the Inner Circle who has left the organization and manages Aesir Industries, a mysterious corporation that is behind the drug Valkyr. Horne ordered Mona to murder Punchinello since he wanted to act independent and out of her orders, a job Mona took because it was personal to her. By the end of the first game, Mona disappears in the Aesir headquarters elevator after being shot in the head by mercenaries for refusing an order to kill Max. In Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, more focus is given to Max and Mona's relationship, and she becomes one of the game's two protagonists. Mona reappears as a suspect in the murder of the U.S. Senator Sebastian Gate. The case is assigned to Max Payne's new partner, detective Valerie Winterson, but despite their past, Max does not inform the authorities that he knows Mona nor does he inform them of her visit to his apartment. During the course of the game, it is revealed that Mona is indeed the killer of Senator Gate. To save her, Max is forced to shoot the corrupt Winterson before she can execute Mona. Mona and Max work together to prevent shadowy hitmen known as Cleaners from eliminating both of them. Eventually, it is revealed that Mona's employer was Alfred Woden, a U.S. senator and a member of the Inner Circle's faction warring with the faction of the Russian mob boss Vladimir Lem. In the end, she is shot in the back by Lem, whom Max kills. She dies in Max's arms as he kisses her, but lives on the game's hardest difficulty level, 'Dead on Arrival'.

In Their Own Story

The rain-slicked streets of a forgotten industrial district. A single shot echoes, then silence. Mona Sax lowers her smoking pistol, the body of a mob enforcer crumpling at her feet. She steps over it without a glance, her heels clicking on wet asphalt. In the distance, a siren wails. She lights a cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating her face—a mask of calm over a storm. 'Max,' she whispers to the night, 'you always did know how to find me.' The smoke curls upward, disappearing into the black sky like a ghost.

Reader's Guide

Mona Sax does not appear in the gameplay of the first Max Payne game, but appears only in its cutscenes. She became playable in four chapters of the first sequel, Max Payne 2 ('Routing Her Synapses', 'Out of the Window', 'The Genius of the Hole' and 'A Losing Game'). In it, Mona's moves are more acrobatic than Max's, and her sections involve several sniping sequences where Mona is equipped with a Dragunov sniper rifle to provide cover fire for Max. Her signature weapon is a Desert Eagle. Mona was also included as a playable multiplayer character in the Classic Multiplayer Character Pack of Max Payne 3 Special Edition. According to the first two games' writer Sam Lake, he 'did want to switch to Mona [...] but it was problematic. In the end, Max frames those sequences with his narration, saying that he doesn’t know exactly what happened, or what Mona did, but it must have been something like this. In other words, when you are playing Mona, you are actually experiencing Max’s guess of the events'. Regarding Mona's possible survival at the end of Max Payne 2, Rockstar's Dan Houser stated that Max Payne 3 would 'not continue that aspect of the story. We toyed with figuring out some way, or doing something clever, and then [decided] "No, no, just move on from that bit of the story." It really didn't work because there was no way of knowing the choices someone made.'

Did You Know?

• Mona Sax was portrayed by Carol Kiriakos and Kathy Tong, and voiced by Julia Murney and Wendy Hoopes in the video games, and was played by Mila Kunis in the film adaptation.
• Mona lives in a derelict theme park on Coney Island that she set up as her base.
• In Max Payne 2, Mona's sections involve several sniping sequences where she is equipped with a Dragunov sniper rifle to provide cover fire for Max.
• According to writer Sam Lake, when you are playing Mona in Max Payne 2, you are actually experiencing Max’s guess of the events.
• Mila Kunis disliked Mona's outfit in the film, saying 'The clothes sucked. Oh my God, it was awful.'