JokerMichel
It doesn't matter how much you enjoy Mark Wahlberg, you're better off saving your money, your popcorn and your time
WolfTheLycan
As a huge fan of the games, this movie is horrible. The action scenes are incredibly boring, the writing is awful, and the ending is poorly executed. Not to mention that there's a scene after the credits, which this film was planned to have a sequel. Why is there flying demons in a Max Payne movie? Here's what I did like about the movie: Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis are two of my favorite actors of all time; it's too bad that they're in this crappy film. Another thing I liked were the Easter eggs like the Valkyr graffiti on the walls. There's an unrated version, but it doesn't make the movie any better. Don't watch this film. Even if you are a hardcore fan of the games, you'll be begging for the minutes you've spent watching this turd back.
albrechtcm
Maybe I've just seen too many movies. While Max Payne looked good from every angle, the writers are standing by throughout holding up a banner announcing the next event. Whenever a beautiful girl walks down a dirty dark alley at night... The moment you lay your eyes on Bad Guy #1 (I won't reveal his name), you know it and at the same time, realize what really happened to Max Payne's family and why. You know when a guy wants to come to Max's apartment with some information that he'll be dead before he can impart it. And you know Max will be blamed for just about everything that happens. There will be no surprises. Now it's just a matter of toughing it out to the end. Even the scene near the end when Max is lying on the street freezing to death. My wife told me several minutes before what was going to happen and how, and of course it did. Someone once said a good story should end with a logical, inevitable surprise.That is to say, you're really surprised, yet when you think about it, it was inevitable and you should have seen it coming. Sometimes to be blindsided by that kind of surprise would be nice.
bkoganbing
Watching Max Payne I did not realize it was based on a video game character until reading about it here. Then certain things began to make sense and I put myself in the place of the protagonist/hero that Mark Wahlberg plays. A lot of it made sense even to me who is of an age where one did not play video games in their formative years.Wahlberg's Max Payne is a detective down in cold case now. He requested a transfer there, not a plumb assignment but one that leaves you with a lot of time on your hands. Time enough to study cases and develop patterns and similarities if one is looking for some special killers. In this case it was Wahlberg's wife and daughter. The late wife wife worked for a pharmaceutical company and it was over her job that she was killed. They've developed a drug for the military which given to soldiers just eliminates fear from the equation. You can fight off just about anything except a directly fatal wound. It's also highly addictive and you'll do just about anything to get it. If you don't get it some dark fantasies come your way.I have to give credit to Mark Wahlberg here. This film maybe based on a video game fantasy but at no time does Wahlberg become a cartoon like caricature. He also gets some good support from Donal Logue as his former partner, Beau Bridges as the former head of security at the victim's job and one deadly female assassin in Mila Kunis. That woman is in a role far from the emptyheaded cheerleader she played in That Seventies Show. She's originally hunting Wahlberg thinking he might have been part of the killing of her sister who's gotten into that drug. But they join forces against the bad guys.Remember this film is a fantasy and for a mass audience and it's hardly Oscar material. Still I have to give credit to Wahlberg and the cast for putting some dimensions into cartoon like characters.
AD
