Max Payne Reviews

shame as I adore the games - really didnt do much for me - like a nice cup of tea - ok for 10 minutes and then forgotten for good.

Max Payne: There's an army of bodies under this river, people who ran out of time, out of friends. I could feel the dead down there, reaching up to welcome me as one of their own. It was an easy mistake to make.

Detective Max Payne works cold case, why some people might ask, only unsolvable cases come by his desk and rarely do they get satisfaction. There is a reason behind this, Max wants to help solve the case of his dead wife and child, who were killed in what seems like a random break and enter. Max goes on a manhunt and realizes that bodies are piling up because of some new drug that is being used on soldiers to make them feel invincible. Max gets in deeper and finds out a lot more about this drug and its wild hallucinations. They see a dark angel, known as the Norse Valkyrie. Max with the help of a new friend whose sister was killed, is trying to expose the secret of Valkyr.

This movie is based off of a video game, and in Hollywood these days it is common knowledge that video game based films are a major turn off. Sometimes they are even just plain old terrible films. They are glorified action thug movies, where the main character go do and say what he/she pleases and escape death. And yes Max Payne does mould itself to fit the criteria of the stereotypical action flick where the good guy escapes death on thousands of occasions. Yes Max Payne exits a building where he takes three bullets and lives, yes he avoids being shot in major shootouts and yes he is the reason many people are killed, and yes he even escapes from a frozen over river, where apparently according to the quote above there are many a dead bodies floating. Max Payne is one man that manages not to fins himself floating in the river for the rest of time, so apparently Max Payne has friends and didnt run out of time.

Mark Wahlberg is what people would define as badass, a mean looking, shoot out, take bullets, fly high kind of guy. Ok maybe not fly high, but when people look at Markie Mark, they automatically say “That guy could live through a shootout” If anyone who in Hollywood could live a hard life like Max Payne the choice would be Whalberg. He isn’t what people would call a shy, awkward type. Whalberg is self dependent, and he reflects that in every work he does. He takes it upon himself to make sure a film is brought forth as maybe not the best film ever, but a good decent effort where he could be talked about. Max Payne may just be that film, this may be the film where a lot lacked, except for his performance.

Not very many big name stars were in this film other than Mark Wahlberg. Mila Kunis, better known from That 70's show as Jackie and from Family Guy as Meg. She doesn’t have all that much to her credit, maybe the recent Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a decent film. Other than that fans may think she playes just a decent role as Jackie on That 70;s show. She did a good job in this film as the badass female and has grown up a lot since the start of That 70's show in 1998. She was only fifteen and the youngest of the cast. She proved herself to some degree beside Mark Wahlberg, and to be fair they only had her a not so very known actress because they didnt want anyone to steal the show from Wahlberg. I was glad to see her sort of rival as his female counterpart. She is able to play her part, with ease and she does have a future as the potentially badass Hollywood female. I don’t know stay tuned for more information.

As far as the story goes, it plays like a cheesy comic book film, with scenes that are set up to make the audience know what is coming next, there is nothing really surprising about this film. How it plays out is obvious and a few scenes come off as terribly cheesy and somewhat uncalled for. For example a seen where Natasha the sister of Max's female friend is at his apartment and she is looking for nothing but a lay. It is uncalled for scene for the director has Olga Kurlylenko as many people know from the newest of the Bond series running around topless acting like a tramp. Yes a terrible word to use, but that is what they were making her do. She was topless, shown from the back in order to be a cheesy tease to all the men watching the film. A terrible way to exploit females in the film. Nudity is a major part in films, and sometimes it is unavoidable and sometimes it is good to see a film just let it pass and not exploit females as tramps and objects. She even goes as far as to tell Max he can call her by whatever name he wishes. I kinda wanted to laugh at the way the words sounded. That was a terrible scene, one of the worst I have seen in a long time.

Max Payne plays out with no surprises like just mentioned, but even when doing so it still remains a decent film. Nowhere near a great film, and nowhere near the greatest film of all time, but a good effort.

Max Payne is a film that I was predicting to be a bit crap but I wanted to watch it to see what it was like. When I did see it, it didnt surprise nor disappoint me. Also, a good friend of mine told me about it aswell about how bad it was. So, I took her review into consideration when I saw it. I did think that the story of Max Payne in this film didnt really feel like a story in the game. To me, I find the film a bad example of a great game like Max Payne. It is like a rip off of it. I love the Max Payne game but was deeply disappointed with this one. I used to play the game a lot when I was a kid. To be perfectly honest, I wouldnt call this film good and I wouldnt call it awful neither. I was hoping that it was going to be a complete action packed thrill ride but I dont think it was really. The action was really good but wasnt a thrilling film at all really. I find it to be a film that has all bad qualities apart from sound and visual effects.


Mark Wahlberg delivers a really bad performance as Max Payne. I do think that he had that body and facial type for the character but didnt really seem that acting type for the character. I find his performance as Max Payne like Nicolas Cages performance as Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider. I didnt feel any emotional drama for Max at all. I feel that Max Payne was a different character with Mark Wahlberg when comparing the game to the film. It felt like Max Payne was reborn but into a different person but with the same name. I think that Wahlberg will earn a Razzie nomination or even a win for Worst Actor. For a moment, I thought to myself, if Mark Wahlberg was British and was charming with women he would have been a good James Bond but after watching Max Payne, I guess I was totally wrong. The rest of the cast including Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Chris O'Donnell and Donal Logue were all absolutely appauling too. I thought the direction was absolutely dreadful too because it seemed to me like the director didnt have a clue what he was doing. I thought to myself after hoping that it would be as original as the game was: "Has the director ever seen, played or even heard of the Max Payne game before?". I would consider John Moore for Worst Director Razzie award too. The script was pretty dreadful aswell which didn?t really connect with what the game is like. This film in my opinion tries to take the reputation of visual effects from Sin City because of the dark colours and yet really colourful colours used in the film too but it failed miserably. The Max Payne character is like a real assassin or a bad cop so to speak but I dont think he felt like a cop at all. This was a lot like a science fiction film because of obviously the bird thing and also because of the stupid blue solution used too.


I couldnt feel any chemistry between any of the characters at all within the film. All I could feell was that Max Payne was getting revenge for his film. I couldnt really feel anything for Max and his involvement with the characters at all. The setting was really good I have to say with a Sin City or Sweeney Todd like dark colours. The same with the cinematography and costume design. The sound effects were awesome but were a bit booming at times which were a bit over the top. The visual effects were good aswell. This film rips-off a lot of Sin City in my opinion and probably in most peoples opinion.


This is my least favourite Mark Wahlberg film and is one of most disappointing films of 2008 so far. It isnt on list of one of best and one of worst neither. It was a bad film really that could have been better like any film can be. I dont think there will be a sequel to Max Payne and if there will be one, that will be even worse.

Whenever someone decides to set out and make a film out of a videogame, there will be two things; 1) An absurd fan outrage if the movie isn't directed by Martin Scorsese or something, and 2) Positive expectations from most fans after seeing the first poster/trailer/whatever. I personally always try to remain unbiased when it comes to some of these adaptations, but in the case of Max Payne, it's sort of impossible in one aspect of the movie: The story. The games, especially part 2, have excellent storylines for the writer of this flick to draw from. The storyline in part 2 for example is adult, perfected, and respects the player as an intellectual individual, not so much as a gamer as most other games with good stories do (Fahrenheit, here's looking at you and your lack of a second act). This is why it's incomprehensible why the writing team of Max Payne took the route they did; this movie has the basic outline of an 80s cop action piece. From the so-called mysterious villain that's predictable from the second he appears (and it isn't Sucre from Prison Break I mean here) to the absurd conspiracy and the reasoning behind it. Every second of this film is predictable and the only things that can be considered as original are those most videogamefans were crapping their pants over are the so-called Valkyries, hallucinations suffered by V-addicts. They're cool and work well within the context of the story. There are some things that could've saved large portions of the story, primarily using Max's inner monologue more; it appears twice in the movie, once in the beginning and once in the end, and it sounds so kickass that it really could've been in it more often. Now it just seems wasted and useless.

Let's move over to the more or less boring acting/directing-department since we got that story out of the way; There's only one REALLY bad thing about the acting here; Sucre from Prison Break as Jack Lupino. He fits the story in the sense that he also seems like something taken out of a horrible 80s movie, and reminded me of that over-the-top villain from Highlander. His character is written absurdly and he plays it so as well, and it makes him seem... well, retarded. It just isn't good at all. Otherwise most of the film has solid acting, with most of the actors making the most out of their characters. I don't think anyone cares much about any other actor in this movie except for how well Mark Wahlberg does as Max Payne. He's good at it, and that's it. Possibly the best part of the entire movie could be Payne himself, but due to the lack of inner monologue we really miss out on a lot of character development. But yeah, Marky Mark does a good job portraying the finnish national hero on film, and there's really no big downfall at his work. The director of this movie, John Moore, does a very good job directing the whole shamble. Visually, this is as good as it gets without the overt use of CGI alá 300. Snow has never looked as good as it does here, and Moore uses very tight editing tricks to make the action scenes intense and fun to look at. For example, during a fistfight around the first thirty minutes in, he uses Sin City-ish effects to change the screen red whenever someone gets hit. There's no blood in the scene, but this makes it look brutal regardless. Now, Moore's directing is the best thing to be seen, and Payne himself is third, so what would I say goes in second? The score of course. It's made by Marco Beltrami, whose scores of 3:10 To Yuma and The Crow: Salvation I absolutely love, and he does a splendid job with Payne as well. The score is in no way reminiscent of the videogame music, which is a good thing in this case since the melancholic sounds wouldn't fit a cop flick like this.

Overall, Max Payne had potential to be the best videogame movie ever made, but the writing team fucked up severely, and hence it didn't turn out all that great. It's quite alright, and worth spending a few bucks on to see, but just don't go into it expecting something as good as the videogames.

''I don't know about Heaven, but I believe in angels.''

Coming together to solve a series of murders in New York City are a DEA agent whose family was slain as part of a conspiracy and an assassin out to avenge her sister's death. The duo will be hunted by the police, the mob, and a ruthless corporation...

Mark Wahlberg: Max Payne

Let's start of by saying I rally loved the Max Payne video games, in their simplistic nature of fast paced shooting accompanied by an interesting concept of Matrix styled Bullet Time shoot outs. Also a hero with so much pain and anguish, so much so he has to take pain killers to numb himself from the experience. So how does the film live up to these expectations everyone asks? Well quite frankly it does not in the slightest match any of the games. The script is appalling, for it's genre there is no action, there is no decent dialogue, there are no similarities to the game for us to latch onto apart from the superficial visual ones we gained from the trailers.

Recalling my mind back to the action sequences in question, I can only recall only two main ones of consequence. Director John Moore succeeds in giving us no wish for any sequels and a comical rendition of Robbie Williams Angels song on the Credits, just to put salt upon the wound.
The Score and music on Max Payne is poor and executed to a point where it is hardly memorable or effective, some scenes being totally void of any music that would emphasis a standard fare of happening to a higher perspective of sorts. Yet no, we are given chaotic alternative loudness of no specific genre that gives the film no soul or resonance that it sorely needs. To say the least what I expected and what I was given on teasers was mysteriously missing from the proceedings.

So Max Payne begins with a segment that is such a rip off, of the Bourne series, its untrue. Underwater and a growling excuse for narration, we are pummeled into boredom before things even begin to take flight. It starts to look up when we have a cool looking 'One Week Later' motto on a building come up, then some cool angles and shots, which happen to tell us the rooms of the Police Station, for us dumb Viewers which we assume the Director assumed. When we see Max Payne in his office, I'm scrambling my brain trying to decipher this filth...I mean how can this BE Max Payne when he resembles nothing of the games magnetism. If the story, plot and action had been the same as the game, there would be no problem. If it had some of the frantic action that drowned the first Max Payne, if it had the flaming romance and passion of Max Payne 2, then we would have a fine film in the bag, but it's worryingly void of all these, even bending the plot out of context. When we see a film that has nothing to keep us glued to the Screen we ask ourselves why? Maybe if the age restriction had been higher then the Makers would have had more reign to do more, but yet, I still doubt it.

Max Payne may look like a variety of different films, but unlike Hitman, Constantine, or Bourne Ultimatum it falls flat on it's face regarding originality and keeping its audiences interested. This film will anger fans of the game and non-fans in equal measure in all likely hood, with it's uneven threaded story that results in a jigsaw thats unfathomable.

The actual cast actually display some of the worst acting I've seen in a fair while. Mark Wahlberg emulates his The Happening choice of film, with this dud to follow.
Mark Wahlberg refused to play Rockstar's Max Payne game before performing in this film, but, in addition, I must assume that neither the director nor the screenwriter ever played this game before either. If there weren't so many shots of the background scenery that tied in with the game (although they were never fully or, in some cases, partially explored, such as the Subway, the absent dream sections, or Police Station or even Ragnarok), I would assume that no one involved in the movie had even seen cut scenes from the game. I would have assumed that they got a one paragraph synopsis on the game, with character names, and just made up their own story that barely connect to the games.

So the first problem with Max Payne is heavy handed and droning attempt to develop a two dimensional character… Why? It's not like Max Payne needs alot of development, he's a dude with a vengeance on, shut up and let it happen. Instead you're walked through all of these really bad scenes filled wit the worst dialogue put to page. It's like watching soft-core blue movies without a nut to bust. That's just the first 20 minutes. The movie continues, but first let me tell you how they open the film, because it really set the bar for the rest of really badness of it all.

We open on a man walking down a hallway towards a door cracked open and light bleeding through it… A baby is crying in the distance. The man moves closer to the door and on that door a big sign reading "Baby" is hung on it. If they're assuming that an audience is that dumb; they didn't just put a big old title on the screen, or put an interpreter up there to point and say ''Baby Come back'' I know it ties with the video game, but this is an adaptation, some changes for the sake of not raping the audience's intelligence have to be made. And, believe me, it doesn't stop there, the film is filled with some of the most heavy handed art direction, really bad sound design and some of the worst editing I've seen since Happening. It's that crud basically.

Later on in the film Max and the Mila Kunis, playing a Russian girl, supposedly to move the plot forward, but ultimately becomes a tragic and unfulfilled, unresolved and disjointed piece.
They stop into a goth tattoo parlor, where they go through a catalogue of tattoos and stop on the reoccurring one they see. They question the proprietor and at the drop of a hat, he pulls out an old book about Norwegian mythology and starts talking about Valkyrie's, the symbol and the significance of the mark/tattoo. This brief wikipedia presentation ends with such a blatant inconsistency with Mark Walberg/Max Payne asking one more question and then the shop proprietor responding with a really big and dumb "Huh?" So in one single turn he goes from Mythology and theology expert into dumb goth guy.

The movie spends so much time building to a conflict, but without any tension, just trivial scene after scene.

There were points in the movie that we were really laughing, but they really weren't supposed to be funny. Dramatic tension was the goal, but the exact opposite occurred. In particular Mila Kunis talking to Max about how much of a dark time bomb he is. The dialogue is all, poorly written that the scene becomes comedic, a piss take.
Beau Bridges(Podge) is also laughably bad.
Other miserable notes… Chris O'Donnell(Robin) is awful.
Nelly Furtado's cameo… Was one of the most laughably bad moments on the screen and the first shot of Ludicrous, was also really funny. Like ludicrously laughable.
It wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that Payne tramples the detective genre for clichés that only someone who has never seen a movie before would be surprised by. Someone dies after ripping off another character and thus pinning suspicion on him, another leaves a frantic phone message about meeting up to discuss new details in a cold case and is found murdered in that other guy's home, and it turns out that you can't really trust anyone(obviously). Again, obviously the filmmakers tried to study the works of the detective genre of old, they just didn't bother to do anything new, which means it fails.

Thorne's script is so short on explanations that it barely holds together. The movie throws drugs, hallucinations, a murder mystery, attacking birds, a devil's army, and the cover-up by a pharmaceutical company and for the most part I felt like an ass for even trying to make sense out of anything this silly. The rest of the plot can be seen coming a mile away and the dialogue said is some of the most ridiculous I've heard all year long. A character says of Payne, "He's looking for something even God wants to stay hidden." What will probably disappoint fans, however, is how few scenes of actual action are really in the movie, and how utterly devoid of excitement those few scenes are. Moore is a hack director in every sense of the word, relying on senseless, video-game style shootouts (accompanied by vile mood lighting) that don't thrill as much as glorify the violence. Is there a more overused action shot than turning to slow-motion to present a gun battle? Most of his computer visuals smack of being stolen from Francis Lawrence's far superior "Constantine," except they look messier and far too overdone to really respect. And how many times can we see digitally created snow falling on the city in the dark night? This movie is style over-drive at its worst.

And the actors don't seem to care. They seem to be approaching this movie with all the subtlety and dramatic weight of a porno. Wahlberg walks through the movie with a bored puss on his face, never digs deeper to show the character's tortured soul, and throws out lines like he could really give a crap what he's saying. I don't really blame him either cause I felt the same way. Milla Kunis (That 70's Show) is in the movie for some unexplainable reason, and she puts on her tough face in a performance that can only be described as laughable. Chris "Ludicrous" Bridges seems to be playing a detective in this movie but for the most part he just seems to be playing Chris "Ludicrous" Bridges. Amaury Nolasco (Prison Break) is a charismatic young actor who I wish could string together some decent movie roles, but that string isn't going to start here with his performance in the role of "crazy guy who likes to stare at people and sometimes look down on them from stairwells and rooftops." I have no idea what happened to Chris O'Donnell but he's taken a sharp decline since Batman and Robin. Clooney seems to have surpassed it and made up for it, as has Arnie. And Beau Bridges comes off the best here but that's like saying that a half-eaten hamburger(Podge) in a bag full of soiled nappies, is the best.

What really bothers me about movies like this is that it's all just violence and how best to package the violence in enticing, simple-minded wrapping paper. The villains are a collection of junkies, prostitutes, pimps, killers, and thugs who wallow in the gutter and the hero isn't that much better because all he wants is vengeance and blood. Both shoot their guns with as much care as if they were shooting in a video game. Both savagely beat on other people, sometimes doing it till death. Is there a difference between the two? Are we supposed to care here or just watch the bullets fly? Why is it that a movie featuring characters that are just violent and bloodthirsty can get a PG-13 but a movie that dissects the violence and ideas of vengeance like "Unforgiven" gets an R? It doesn't make sense to me and it sends out the wrong messages. I wish the MPAA would learn that.

Overall, the real problem of this project(and why I was so disgusted by it) lies in the fact that they took a deep, layered and emotional story and made it into a big, dumb, boring action movie. Well, at least to a degree. On one hand, you've got ridiculous Matrix-indulgent action sequences. I realize this was part of the game, but at least in the game they were entertaining. If this had been done years ago, maybe it would've had some sort of impact. As for the other side of the movie, it tries to capture the game's mood-setting film noir storytelling, but ends up one big bore. Few of the important details at all are revealed in the entirety of the film, leaving a sort of Lost effect stagnating the air. But who knows... maybe they intend to save that for the sequel, God help us.
Best thing about this film was that they had the Watch-men Trailer at the start beforehand, which pretty much says it all really.

''There's an army of bodies under this river, people who ran out of time, out of friends. I could feel the dead down there, reaching up to welcome me as one of their own. It was an easy mistake to make.''

I didn't have many expectations going in to see Max Payne, never having played the game. I left the cinema disappointed because the movie held such promise that failed to fully deliver because of an illogical story. This was mostly due to bad editing - there were many scenes that dragged on for what felt like forever and other scenes that felt out of place. It got to the point where I wanted to scream at the screen "Get on with it!".

Back to the story - the mythological aspects of the drug hallucinations were actually more interesting but it wasn't really developed and was abandoned in favor of something else (I won't go into the details but yeah, the plot twist is so obvious).

Another thing that had me confused was who the hell Mila Kunis was supposed to be. She appears, she helps Max Payne while trying to avenge her sister's death but the reason why she's carrying all this heavy weaponry is never explained.

I give Max Payne points for some exciting action but there's not enough of it for me to set aside just how dull the movie turned out to be.

When the film first began, I was very skeptical as to how good it was going to be, or how bad. It seemed like it was going to be one of those poor video game films, kind of like the Resident Evil's or Doom. The verdict is, It was pretty average. The action was pretty limited, but they had a lot of the great characters from the game, and they all did well. The only character flaw that I was able to catch, was Jim Bravura. He was played by Ludacris, where in the game he is white. So I was rather confused.

As for the story, it was alright and had plenty of scenes from the game. also there were plenty of flaws. I noticed a few dull and unnecessary scenes. They either tried too hard, or Mark Wahlberg just wasn't the right character.

What I was looking for in this film, was for it to be real to the game, and it was pulled of ok. Not like I would have wanted, but worth watching I guess.