Usually Mark Whalberg can do no wrong in selecting movie roles that showcase his acting skills and tough-guy persona (look to The Departed or We Own the Night). Max Payne proves there is a first time for everything.
Max Payne is based off the ultra-violent and hip videogame of the same name; and the creators of the movie try damn hard to follow the plotline of this game and transfer a sense of it onscreen. Max is a New York cold case detective looking for answers and revenge in the unsolved murder of his wife and son.
That is basically it.
No, I’m not joking. The movie has every overplayed cliché you could think of – a troubled cop partnership that results in death, a connection between his wife’s death and a promiscuous lady, horribly accented ethnic gangsters, crooked policemen, and so forth. Plus it is filled with enough brooding mugs, gloomy atmospheres, angry stares and pistol-whipping to make your head spin with boredom.
However, the one thing it has going for itself is the dark and gritty setting it is shot in. It is very similar to Sin City and follows the same kind of stylized brutality. No doubt following the director’s desire to stay true to the movie’s videogame routes and the coolness that previous movies have been able to produce with this effect (Crank) but it in the end it still does not resonate with the audience.
Mila Kunis (That 70s Show) and Chris O’Donnell (Batman Forever) have supporting roles in the film but neither of them have the ability or talent to help move the film along. All the action leaves no room for the actors to emote unless intense rage and panic are the two emotions in the human psyche. Rapper Ludicrous also makes a cameo, which might have been the movie’s title in pre-production.
Typically I love thrillers of this caliber but Max Payne is so over dramatized and predictable that it comes off like a B movie of the early nineties. Except for the strange sub plot that involves tattoos, terrorists, drugs, and strange shadow creatures that pop out of the sky; towards the middle it loses the audience and becomes delusional.
I would recommend the film only to diehard fanatics of the game, and people who find Whalberg deliciously handsome. Yet, even his performance was not enough to make the movie watchable, sorry Mark.