Max Payne (2008)

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.

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.

Mark Wahlberg’s titular hero hasn’t cracked a smile in seven years. The surprise is that he makes the lonely cop seem half human with half a dozen words and a staggering amount of violence.