Max Payne

It doesn't look, sound or resonate like a movie, so what is Max Payne? It's a videogame, people, masquerading as cinema and yet one more blight on pop culture. Mark Wahlberg has followed his deserved Oscar nomination for The Departed with questionable choices, such as Shooter and The Happening. But this is a career low. Max Payne is a dank, dispiriting cop flick that merely requires Wahlberg to wear a scowl that could have been painted on digitally with more expressiveness. Wahlberg's Max is an NYPD washout reduced to handling cold cases, like the murder of his wife and child. Out for revenge, Max joins forces with Russian assassin Mona Sax (so sad to see Mila Kunis, the romantic highpoint in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, stuck in this dreck), who is equally vengeful. It seems that the same villains have offed her sister Natasha (new Bond babe Olga Kurylenko). The plot has something to do with a hallucinatory drug that makes soldiers super-strong to fight in Iraq. Too bad director John Moore couldn't inject the drug into the fragile thread of a script. Max just drags on as it drags you down. If you stay and watch the endless end credits, there's a short scene that hints a sequel is coming. That's what I call real pain.

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PETER TRAVERS

(Posted: Oct 30, 2008)