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Max Payne Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: Not Rated (for violence including intense shooting sequences, drug content, some sexuality and brief strong language) Genre: Action Theater release: October 17, 2008 by 20th Century Fox Directed by: John Moore Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes Cast: Mark Wahlberg (Max Payne), Mila Kunis (Mona Sax), Beau Bridges (BB Hensley), Chris "Ludacris" Bridges (Jim Bravura), Chris O'Donnell (Jason Colvin), Donal Logue (Alex Balder), Amaury Nolasco (Jack Lupino), Kate Burton (Nicole Horne), Olga Kurylenko (Natasha), Nelly Furtado (Christa Balder) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

As a video game, Max Payne was fairly groundbreaking for its time, offering a cool, but gritty crime noir about a New York City cop driven to the edge by the murder of his family. It played like a graphic novel heavily influenced by action movie clichés, particularly John Woo films and The Matrix with its nifty ability to slow down time, leaping with guns blazing while dodging the enemy's bullets. Yet as stylish and fun as the storytelling and game-play were, with a tongue-in-cheek name like Max Payne, the game was clearly an homage to action classics rather than a serious story.

As a movie, the game is gone, and with it, surprisingly, most of the action. What does that leave? A clichéd cop action movie based on a game about cop action movie clichés. And with virtually no action for the first hour of the film, it's a tediously paced action film at that.

Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne

In a world where visuals rule and moviemaking budgets are tight, director John Moore (responsible for the slightly less atrocious Behind Enemy Lines and pointless remakes of The Omen and Flight of the Phoenix) and the filmmakers apparently felt that the movie could get by on the "strength" of its dramatic storytelling. They were wrong … dead wrong. (Cue dramatic music.)

Payne is played by Mark Wahlberg, whose career has taken a serious nosedive between this and M. Night Shymalan's recent bomb, The Happening. But aside from accepting the role in the first place, I can't fault him or any of the other actors—well, except perhaps the laughably awful performance from Beau Bridges. And considering that "Marky Mark," Ludacris, and Nelly Furtado are all in this cast, I wonder if Max Payne might have worked better as a musical. It ultimately doesn't matter whether you cast an Oscar-nominated actor, a respected veteran, or an inexperienced pop star—there's simply nothing to work with when the movie plays like a collection of loosely related scenes strung together.

As the story goes, Payne's wife and baby were murdered by thugs three years earlier. Our hero arrived on the scene just minutes after and took out two of the culprits—the third got away and was never apprehended. A hollow shell of his former self ("I don't believe in heaven. I believe in pain."), the homicide detective transfers to filing cold cases, and while it would seem he did so to escape the world, he's actually tracking down leads in his quest for vengeance.

Olga Kurylenko as Natasha

While pressing a snitch at a party, Payne meets Natasha (Olga Kurylenko, the Bond babe in the upcoming Quantum of Solace), a sleazy drug addict who may have information that Payne needs. When she's brutally killed after their exchange, Payne is linked to the murder as one of the last to see her alive. This leads Natasha's inexplicably grouchy sister Mona Sax (Mila Kunis of That '70s Show and Family Guy) on her own vendetta, and before long, the assassin and cop are teaming up to unravel a conspiracy related to the murder of Payne's family.

I use the word "conspiracy" in the truest sense because it's so laughable. Everything revolves around Payne in this movie, from the corporate CEO who expresses her condolences three years after the death of his wife (a former employee) to the entire homicide department that loses composure when Payne simply walks in the room—even random thugs on a deserted street seem to whisper his name with contempt. If Payne were even half the super-cop he's made out to be, he'd have uncovered the conspiracy years ago since everyone in his life is somehow tied to it.

Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges as Jim Bravura

This is the sort of film that introduces people without introductions, only telling us the bare minimum while sidestepping character development. A mystery man watches menacingly from the shadows and rooftops before and after every murder, just to make the point that he's the bad guy, and to give him something to do on screen. A Haitian gang leader cryptically warns Mona about Payne ("Max Payne has been hunting, looking for something that God wants to stay hidden … Don't be near him when judgment day comes."). What's his point? Heck, I can't even remember why Mona needed to talk to Mr. Haitian in the first place, the film is typically that pointless and inconsequential. You know you're in for it when Payne and Mona question a tattoo artist, and he answers with a lengthy dissertation on Valkyries and Norse mythology.

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