I should have known better.  I like Mark Wahlberg and I like comic book-like films.  But the trailers for Max Payne seemed to lack something.  Following my instincts would have been a good idea on this one.  I found Max Payne to be a poorly thought out exercise in futility.  The plot was predictable, the concept was weak and the action sequences often made no sense.  In a nutshell, this film was a major disappointment.  The pain was all mine.

Max Payne was not without some redeeming qualities.  There were some decent special effects, some big action scenes and some interesting camera angles with the comic book flash effect being used at times.  However, good qualities in a fatally flawed film don't amount to much in the greater scheme of things.  It was a wasted effort.

Detective Max Payne (Wahlberg) lost his wife in an unsolved homicide three years ago.  As a Police Officer, he could have been there to save her had he gotten home ten minutes earlier.  Instead, he has been left alone to hunt down the one killer that got away.  The wing tattoos on the two bad guys he killed are his only clue to solving the murder of his wife and child.  He has been reassigned to the cold case desk because of his obsession with the case.  Most of the officers in his circle do not like or trust him. 

Payne spends his time off-duty hunting down people he believes are associated with his wife's murder.  He is chasing the wrong shadows.  The evil lurks closer than he realizes.  Payne's wife was not murdered in a botched robbery gone bad as the official report suggests...it is a massive government cover-up of a military program gone wrong.  Payne expends his energy in a scorched earth campaign to uncover the truth.  His efforts eventually lead him to the source of his pain. 

There are major plots holes in Max Payne.  The entire concept seems flawed from the start.  We are to believe that a manufactured drug has created bad guys with an uncanny ability to survive.  Yet the supernatural forces at work are weakly explained away through Norse mythology.  Maybe understanding the video game might help the plot make sense, but the movie fails to tie together the two concepts in any credible manner.  The plot attempts to give us twists, but you can see them coming well in advance.  There were no surprises in this film...just big action.  Action can only go so far to cover for bad writing.  Sam Lake created the video game concept, which might make sense from a gamer standpoint.  The adapted screenplay was written by Beau Thorne, apparently to capitalize on the popularity of the game.  The characters were predictable and flat, the dialogue hackneyed and the themes confusing.  I am surprised that anyone cut loose 35 million dollars to create this nonsense.  But then again...this is what the movie-going public wants...or probably a specific target audience...likely teenagers...the film did well at the box office.

The acting wasn't bad.  There were some decent performances by veteran actors.  I mentioned that I like Wahlberg...he brings a thuggish likability to his characters that I enjoy.  This character was no different.  Mentally tough and street savvy.  Beau Bridges played the part of Payne's friend BB Hensley.  Bridges still has it.  It's nice to see him back on the big screen after a slew of television programs.  Payne teams up with an assassin named Mona Sax (Mila Kunis).  The whole plot line involving Sax was a stretch.  It didn't seem to fit into the story very well and was more of a distraction than anything.  However, I liked Kunis.  I am not familiar with Kunis' body of work but she was decent in this film as more than just a pretty face.  Ludacris also made an appearance in this film as an Internal Affairs Lieutenant.  Ludacris was decent in another role that did not fit well into the storyline.  The cast was decent, they just didn't have much to work with.

One of my pet peeves in action films like this is the complete lack of thought that goes into the shooting and explosions.  A shotgun generally holds four to five shells.  There were times that Payne fired his shot gun in excess of ten times without reloading.  That is just not possible.  I stopped counting the gunshots from his handgun after a while, but there was a scene where Payne fired no less than twenty five rounds from a standard magazine.  His total rounds expended was well into the hundreds.  Using standard magazines, that would be seven or eight.  So where were all of these magazines on his body during previous scenes.  That many mags have to be carried somewhere.  It just doesn't make sense.  Couldn't the writers have him pick up a weapon from a fallen opponent and use that weapon?  It would increase the believability an iota.  Another issue I had was the decision by a character that wants to escape by helicopter from the roof to blow the entire floor several levels below the landing pad to prevent anyone from pursuing him to the roof.  Now what happens to upper levels when a lower level is blown out?  They collapse...roof and all.  There were other issues that affected the plausibility of the action but I will step off the soap box at this point.

Max Payne was rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America.  This was not accidental.  There were some suggestive themes, but they were toned down to ensure a rating that would hit the target audience.  There was one quick naked breast shot that came and went before you could enjoy it.  There was some drug use of the manufactured kind, which was the foundation of the plot.  The violence was rampant but gore-free.  The typical hail of bullets with people falling down and no blood.  There may have been some minor language but I don't recall anything overtly offensive.  It appeared that the Director, John Moore, intentionally tempered the content in order to get the highest volume of gamers as possible into this film.  It is certainly clean enough for that target audience...I would allow my ten year old to see it...as long as I don't have to watch it again.

I thought Max Paynelacked imagination.  It would have taken a major rework of this script for me to have enjoyed it.  The linkage between the supernatural and the manufactured drug would have to be ferreted out to a satisfactory point.  The action sequences would need to be structured in a believable manner.  The foreshadowing would be clever with some misdirection to keep you guessing.  The characters would have a bit more depth.  With those adjustments, I might enjoy a film like this.  However, as it stands, Max Payne ekes out two stars out of a possible five.  Go pick up Constantine instead.  It is similar in some ways, but was put together better.

Recommended: No

Movie Mood: Action Movie
Film Completeness: A few glitches, but mostly complete.
Worst Part of this Film: Plot