Just let me get this out of the way, having played the game, this movie doesn’t even compare. If you want the true Max Payne experience, your best bet is the PC original.

Slight Spoilers Ahead

As a movie by itself, it still fails. The key thing that made Max Payne a great game, was the cheesy narration and non-stop John Woo/Matrix style action. Without the narration by Max Payne, he ends up being one dimensional.  In the movie, he doesn’t have any interesting or clever smartass dialogue. Mark Wahlberg’s acting, and his fellow supporting characters also contribute to the bad acting. Films like Sin City was made cheesy on purpose and it worked, but this movie was trying to be too serious.

Well you guys wanted to watch this for the action scenes right? Well don’t expect anything from the action department either. The original Max Payne is a tough as nails, heavy hitting son of a gun. He shoots and kills without mercy. In this movie, he’s busy going around walking and acts like a pansy, and tries his best to not kill his enemies.

In the game, he’s pretty handy with a gun when he’s outmanned. In the movie, he runs away like a bitch. Only in the end does he unleash his rage, and when he does, you hardly see any cool action sequences, except for a really lame “bullet time” shot. When he uses his rage, with the help of drugs, it’s all just quick cuts, like in Batman Begins, when Batman first showed up to take care of the drug traffickers. It makes sense in Batman, but not in a Max Payne movie.

For a movie based on a game about shoot em ups, this movie is devoid of action the majority of the time. For a game that was bloody and violent, you’d expect an R-rated movie, but you get a PG-13 gimped version for the movie.

One of the characters in the game Jim Bravura, an old fat white cop, is now played by a skinny black rapper. I don’t have a problem with this. But I do have a problem when it’s a rapper named Ludacris. He sticks out like a sore thumb. This movie was already bad enough, but Ludacris has the award for the crappiest acting this year.

The storyline is not accurate to the game. If you’re going to change it, at least make it more interesting, but the execution was just off. The drugs used by the junkies sees actual winged creatures, Valkyries, while the game was more subtle. The original game was about Max Payne on the run from the cops while trying to uncover the mystery between his families’ death and his frame up. This movie has no urgency to it.

If you’re a fan of the game, you’ll be sorely disappointed. If you haven’t played the game, you’ll hate it just as much. You’re better off skipping this trash and watching another Mark Wahlberg movie, like The Happening.

Grade: F

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