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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.
6/10
