Max Payne: Critic Reviews

The movie is a series of glum interrogation scenes that lead nowhere special, with a not-quite-sci-fi urban murkiness that makes it look like someone was trying to shoot Blade Runner in Cleveland.

Max Payne is content to be an efficient vehicle for the delivery of a familiar range of sensations, some of which almost rise to the level of feelings.

The film combines ferocious self-importance with lashings of really nasty, unreflective violence.

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.

Sexy girls and lots of automatic weapons are involved in an occasionally coherent plot.

The filmmakers aim their cynicism more at us than at any government or drug company.

No amount of generosity could excuse the levels of ineptitude on display here.

Honestly, you find yourself rooting against Payne's survival, even with a good actor in the hollow role. There's nothing inside the film's sour, slovenly spirit of vengeance.

Max Payne is a junkyard dog of a film that is true to its video-game roots even as it transcends them.

Dark, moody, extremely twisted and hard to enjoy on any level.

Max Payne may be the worst movie of the year. The "may be" qualifier is only because the year isn't over yet.

The story, involving conspiracies, doesn't always make sense. And the surprises are easy to predict; director John Moore doesn't try to hide them.

Moore artfully blends vidgame and film-noir aesthetics while editor Dan Zimmermana(TM)s measured rhythms yield a more coherent, less frenzied work than one might expect from the source material.

A weak little sister to Sin City.

As good as a couple of its action beats are, Max still suffers from the heartlessness that makes games emotionally inferior to movies. Nobody ever shed a tear over a video-game character's death.

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.

Max Payne, game or movie, has precious little to say.

Maybe fans of the game will be okay with the cinematic adaptation but for those who aren't new to Max and his world, this isn't an impressive introduction. Clunky action, chaotic plotting, and embarrassing dialogue are not ways to impress newcomers.

The emotional underpinnings and psychological depths of great detective fiction get tossed aside for a wallow in stylistic excess.

A straight-up action picture, and a rather bombastic, familiar one at that.

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.

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.

Miserable, in every sense of the word.