Average Rating: 3.7/10
Reviews Counted: 130
Fresh: 21 | Rotten: 109
While it boasts some stylish action, Max Payne suffers severely from an illogical plot and overdirection.
Average Rating: 3.4/10
Critic Reviews: 26
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 24
While it boasts some stylish action, Max Payne suffers severely from an illogical plot and overdirection.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.9/5
User Ratings: 213,563
Rockstar Games' double-gunned action franchise comes to the big screen thanks to director John Moore (The Omen) and Mark Wahlberg, who embodies the title character of Max Payne, a widowed cop hell-bent on delivering justice no matter what the cost as he investigates a string of killings in his city. Mila Kunis and Chris O'Donnell head up the supporting cast, with Beau Thorne adapting the screenplay for the 20th Century Fox production. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi
Oct 17, 2008 Wide
Jan 20, 2009
$40.6M
20th Century Fox
All Critics (132) | Top Critics (26) | Fresh (22) | Rotten (113) | DVD (17)
Max Payne is a junkyard dog of a film that is true to its video-game roots even as it transcends them.
The filmmakers aim their cynicism more at us than at any government or drug company.
Sexy girls and lots of automatic weapons are involved in an occasionally coherent plot.
You can't help but wonder where the fine actor in The Departed and even Invincible has gone. It's not been a good year for Wahlberg: First The Happening, and now this.
Maybe somebody decided the movie was already so convoluted and leaden that throwing in a few swooping, screeching valkyries could only help. They do not.
The moviegoers are passive hostages on a long ride they've taken so many times before. So gameboys are advised to man their PlayStations this weekend; action-movie fans in search of red meat can wait for the inevitably more graphic DVD version.
Payneful
Never comes close to captivating its audience like the game did before it.
The willfully absurd action sequences help the movie slog along, but slog it does, right through to the obligatory after-credits scene to establish the possibility of a franchise.
Based on a Finnish shoot-em up video game, Max Payne is all style and little story, cheerless detective Max (Mark Wahlberg) drifting through a washed out and snowy New York in search of his wife's killer.
Two words sum up my favorite parts of this film: 'Olga' and 'Mila'
It held my attention, which is more than I can say for some of the so-called "art films" that come out at the end of every year.
A detective story, a pharmaceutical miracle drug and winged creatures from some demonic dimension sprouting like weeds in the spring. Too much and too artificial.
Imagine The Constant Gardener after a frontal lobotomy, and that's basically Max Payne in a nutshell.
[A]ll [the] wide-open possibilities about where this story can go get so narrowed down into something banal and bleak and ordinary that you can hardly breathe with it...
This tired, neutered action thriller won't cause you max pain, but you might wince every now and again.
John Moore directs the hell out of the action, while Jonathan Sela's glistening photography captures the snow and rain that fall on these bloody New York streets. But you'd have to be on crack not to guess the 'surprise' finale.
Among the best films adapted from videogames. Say no more.
Kunis and Wahlberg are not bad. Thats the best I can do. Decent effects for an action movie but no where as cool as the games it was based off of.
June 3, 2009Super Reviewer
Having never played to game on which it's based I have nothing to go on as far as adaptation goes but I'm not sure if that matters so much does it!? Anyway, I liked the noir style of this film - the darkly lit alleyways, the no-mans land of New York's side streets and the lingering snow, continually floating throughout
November 30, 2011Super Reviewer
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