Payneful
Max Payne (2008)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:124
Fresh:22
Rotten:102
Average Rating:3.8/10
Consensus: While it boasts some stylish action, Max Payne suffers severely from an illogical plot and overdirection.
Theatrical Release:Oct 17, 2008 Wide
Box Office: $40,632,110
Synopsis: Rockstar Games' antihero Max Payne gets his own movie with this video game adaptation. Mark Wahlberg (THE DEPARTED) plays the titular cop who is still trying to get over the death of his family... Rockstar Games' antihero Max Payne gets his own movie with this video game adaptation. Mark Wahlberg (THE DEPARTED) plays the titular cop who is still trying to get over the death of his family while investigating several murders, while Mila Kunis (FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL) costars as an assassin desperate for her own revenge. [More]
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Olga Kurylenko, Chris O'Donnell, Donal Logue, Amaury Nolasco, Kate Burton
Director: John Moore
Director: John Moore
Screenwriter: Beau Thorne
Producer: Julie Yorn, Scott Faye, John Moore
Composer: Marco Beltrami, Buck Sanders
Studio: 20th Century Fox
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Release:
Jan 20, 2009
Reviews for Max Payne
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.
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.
The film combines ferocious self-importance with lashings of really nasty, unreflective violence.
I didn't hate Max Payne, but it's hard to summon up strong feelings of any kind about something so slick, remote and vacuum-packed you barely feel you've seen it.
The occasional muzzle-flare of stylish violence, but that’s it. Dull, depressing and dragging its knuckles at 100 minutes, Max Payne misfires and Wahlberg’s leading-man jinx continues.
Director John Moore is clearly more interested in hot babes, body tattoos and slo-mo shootings than he is in story or characterisation. Max Payne offers Min Pleasure.
No high-octane, fast-paced shoot ’em up this, Max Payne may well be the most tedious trip to a cinema you make all year. Truly, the minutes pass like hours. It’s akin to one of those straight-to-DVD titles you only ever find in petrol stations.
It would be far too easy to say that max pain sums up Mark Wahlberg’s latest lead role.
Mark Wahlberg glooms about the land in the latest computer-game makeover, a noir action thriller of such scowling, benighted violence that it could send manic depressives over the edge and make newcomers to that condition of us all.
Latest News for Max Payne
January 21, 2009:
Razzies Name 2008's Worst Movie Nominees
No awards season would be complete without the Golden Raspberry Awards (AKA The Razzies), awarded each year to the very worst movies to hit Hollywood. This year's winners will... More...
January 19, 2009:
RT on DVD: Max Payne, Saw V, King Kong on Blu-ray
Mark Wahlberg brings maximum pain to DVD this week in the critically-punished Max Payne, although new horror titles Saw V and Repo! The Genetic Opera didn't fare much better on... More...
November 14, 2008:
UK Critics Consensus: Is Zack And Miri Make A Porno On The Money (Shot)? Is Max Payne Maxing Or Taxing?
This week in the UK cinema screens we have Kevin Smith's latest, the intuitively titled Zack And Miri Make A Porno. Marky Mark Wahlberg stars in the video game adaptation Max... More...
October 19, 2008:
Box Office Guru Wrapup: Max feels no Payne at No. 1
With the elections just a few weeks away, W. seemed ready to rule the box office this weekend, but it was Fox's weekend to break out of its slump, with two of its openers... More...
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