Having never played any games from this franchise, I can only solely base my thoughts on the film itself. And honestly, it's not terrible. Granted it's not 'Silent Hill' or 'Lara Croft: Tomb Raider' good but it certainly isn't 'Alone in the Dark' or 'DOA: Dead or Alive' atrocious. A homicide detective seeks revenge for the murder of his wife and child, to which he soon comes across a company producing chemicals to aggressively enhance soldiers. 'Jacob's Ladder' meets any other generic revenge thriller, although this iteration lacks any thrills. Having done some rapid research (thank you Wikipedia), it seems at first the story stays true to the source material for the outset. Norse mythology, identical characters and similarities in plot points, regardless the narrative still felt like an incoherent illogical illusory mess. The non-existent character development resulted in any plot twists (if you can call them that) to be negated. It plays the old "good guy is bad guy" card and it delivered nothing to the table. The character of Payne himself should be emotionally vulnerable, everything he loved has now instantly dissipated. Emptiness. Sorrow. Melancholy. Instead, we get Wahlberg scowling and walking as if he owns the city whilst simply talking his lines. No expression, just talking. He might have the physicality correct, but lacks emotional conviction. The supporting cast were forgettable, that also includes Kunis, simply proclaiming "oh no...it's Max Payne!". Aesthetically, I adored the noir style. Glossy, atmospheric and reminiscent of 'Sin City'. Moore directed this to "max"-imum potential. Action was well executed, the Valkyrie imagery was ominous and he convincingly made the environment its own character. The tower siege in the third act was chaotic and visually impressive, particularly the Valkyrie hallucinations which tear apart the building. Is it style over substance? I suspect so. Just a shame that the cast and screenplay melt away what could've been a decent crime mystery.

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.

I am a hardcore fan of the original game. It was a Neo-Noir Thriller meets John Woo type of game. However, when I went to see this film I lowered my expectations as many video game to movie adaptations are horrendous. What I saw was a generically action film, with none of the heart and meaning of the games. The casting choice itself was "acceptable" as Marky Mark kinda tried to act the role, given the script sucks, which was admirable. From changing important characters to cliché filled scenes, there is really not much to praise, except for a few visual scenes and some Slow motion action scenes. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Even the main villain, a baffling choice to make it BB(Backstabbing Bastard) instead of Nicole Horne, who would've given the film an interesting and unsuspecting villain was demoted to a second tier character. Mila Kunis as Mona does not seem right, as her lines feel weak and forced, with almost no emotion behind it.(Same goes for other actors as well). All in all it is a very forgetful film, which is a shame, because they had so much potential to turn an amazing game into an equally amazing movie. For hardcore fans or regular fans of the games, stay away from it as you would feel that important characters or settings are completely disregarded. For casual moviegoers if you are into a bland generic action movie, with a few good scenes than this is highly recommended, otherwise stay away from it.

No, that summary title isn't wrong, I was playing with words. Much like director John Moore does with scripts!How, pray tell, did this man ever get the leap into feature films?No please, I would really like to know. I have 7 features under my belt, all independently of course, but this guy just jumps straight in with Behind Enemy Lines (which to be fair was, well, fair).But my god, if there ever was a boring director then it must be John Moore. He does some things in his films that even make Uwe Boll seem exciting!Max Payne may be one of the better game to film adaptations, but by the 30 minute mark I was checking Facebook on my phone, doing a crossword and skyping my husband.Even with such beautiful visuals, at times, there just wasn't enough to hold my attention. I only played the game a handful of times, but that seems more than what Moore did before he got his hands on this project.Such a shame, but a good background movie.