SOUND OFF

Watched it a couple of hours ago with a friend that hadn't played the game. She thought it was "interesting" and "I've seen a lot worse". I on the other hand really liked it, liked the way they blended in the "dreams" from the game. It was not something I'd put on my "favorite movies of all time"-list, but definitely a step forward!

#3, that's exactly the same basis as the video game. If they strayed from that, they could have just named the movie whatever they wanted and the fans of the video game wouldn't have known it was about Max Payne.

i wasnt disappointed by the weak script, expected one coming into it. i went into the film looking for the fun visuals but felt their needed to be much more action, much more action. Ludacris's character was....ludacris. Tracey Morgan could have done a better job. When Max decides to take a random stroll in his house, 3 years after his wife died and he moved out, he can just get in? and the window is fucking open still, after 3 years...really? I agree with Kent about the sucky end with Kunis just disappearing. I did however enjoy it...the few action sequences were really enjoyable and the trippy angles kept me happy.

I believe Kunis's charater in the videogame makes a simiar exit so there ya go. Its a videogame movie so what did anyone expect. Wahlberg couldn't have for shit in the happening and now from what you guys are saying, he didn't do well here either. Ill wait for DVD.

i love it when kids like kent get all raged for no reason. calm down plz, its just a movie

You know, Mark Wahlburg hasn't been a good actor since shooter. To say he was the perfect fit for Max Payne is completely idiotic. At best, you need an actor who looks a little grizzled. Not a pretty boy whos main claim to fame is the funky bunch. If you want to bad mouth this movie, begin with the rediculous plot. Angels, Demons, norse gods. what the hell man. the action scenes in the trailers themselves looked really choppy like the editor didnt know what the hell he was doing in the first place. May Payne wasnt even that good of a videogame. But i suppose for die hard fans, this brings closure. You cant honestly expect games like Max Payne to work as a movie. I havent seen this movie, nor have any desire too. But whats sad is some people get so serious about this shit. Its a fucking movie, its supposed to be fun. sure some are horrid pieces of wet salty smelly garbage, but at least give them a chance to settle on your pallet before you start to bash them.

I almost fell asleep. Huge bore, action sequences were lacking. Very disappointing.

AWFUL. it was a huge bore up until the end...and even the ending action scene was boring. Good soundtrack, the valkyries were ALLRIGHT, I dont think they made the movie better. Mark Wahlberg was awful. The link to "Max Payne 2" after the credits was awful as well. The video game ends with max eventually getting to the chick in charge of Aesir at the end, not his dads old partner. And Im pretty sure (but not exact so dont jump on my balls if im wrong) but Im pretty sure Mona Sax (Mila Kunis) dies in the game too.....I was excited for this movie because I could recognize everything in the previews as something from the game (minus the valkyries). And apparently those two minutes they showed as previews were all that they decided to use from the game in the movie. What a tease.

16) It's been awhile but I think if you played the game on the hardcore extreme difficulty you get an ending where she lives. At least I remember something like that.

Bad movies. I thought Max Payne will be better than Hitman. I think the action in Max Payne still not enough and script is really really bad to me. So disappointed.

Those of you that saw the movie, what were the previews that were shown in front? Anything good?

Movie Critics are not any better judges of movies than anyone else. They are simply nerd fanboys with inflated egos and an underserved sense of entitlement. Plus "ACTUAL" professionals do not use words like Kent there. If you want to go see it, then do it. There doesn't seem to be anything constructive in this forum yet anyway. Holy crap I hate nerds...

Well, for starters, they screwed with the videogame's plot, A LOT. There were several elements missing from the movie that would have made for a better plot, I think. There's a crucial character, Alfred Woden, who was simply nonexistent. Him missing screws things up a lot if they truly planned on doing a sequel as his involvement is even more central in the plot of the 2nd game. For those not in the know who didn't play the game, Alfred tips Max off on a few leads here and there, and then strikes a deal with Max that after his rampage was over he would use his power to get Max off the hook if he killed Nicole Horne, who would've probably been killed by Max anyways. Win-win. Alfred Woden was part of a group called the Inner Circle, a secretive group of politicians/businesspeople who have been pulling the strings of power behind the scenes for centuries- real conspiracy type stuff. Nicole has basically gone beyond the authority of the circle and is doing whatever the heck she wants, which is why Woden wanted her gone. There's more, but the bottom line is they left a CRUCIAL character out who would've added a lot to the plot of the movie. They also left out a crucial character, Vinnie Gognitti. He was alluded to in the "Gognitti Storage" sign where Max discovered that some of Michelle's files were missing, but nothing more. Gognitti was part of the "mobster food chain" and is also a bigger character in the 2nd game. Provided the right casting, this could've also added more depth to the plot as well as satisfying fans of the original games. The next thing I am mentioning is not a character, but rather a HUGE PLOT ELEMENT. In my opinion they ripped out part of the heart and soul of Max Payne when they did this. Max Payne, the game, had Payne basically stumbling into a mobster operation on Roscoe street, and after his handler Alex gets killed, Payne decides enough time has been spent and just goes on a killing spree killing his way up the mobster ladder until he kills Jack Lupino. Max decides this because Valkyr junkies are the ones who kill his wife and son, and the mob in NYC is who distributes the drugs. In the beginning he thinks small, but by the time he gets to Lupino he's basically lost his job as a cop and the cops are after Payne as well. THIS NEVER HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE. Bravura, in the movie, is after Payne sure, but nobody else?!? That made things a lot less interesting and frankly, changed the whole tone of how the movie could have played out had it stuck to the storyline of the game. I think by leaving out some things from the game and changing the characters, they biffed this one big time. Not to the extent of trash like the Doom movie, but bad enough nonetheless. That's not to say that it was a terrible movie, it was a step in the right direction as far as videogame movies. However, we still have a long way to go. Now I am going to break down what they did to the characters of the game versus how they were in the movie. Max Payne- Great casting choice, Mark Wahlberg is one of my favorites. He plays Payne mostly to perfection, though to be quite honest the script is what held him back from delivering a better performance. Can't do it if it's not apart of the movie! Mona Sax- I feel there are better casting choices than Mila Kunis. I like her, but someone else would've filled her shoes better. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm sure there could've been better. Mona is changed drastically from her role in the game. In the game she doesn't even appear until Max kills Lupino. The scene were they meet in the game makes it clear she has a rep. as a assassin, and Max knows who she is. It also reveals Max' apparent weakness for Mona, as she has no trouble slipping him a Mickey. She does it because she doesn't want to be followed. It's also the first of the weird sequences in the game where it appears to be hallucinations. Mona, in the game, is the sister of Angela Punchinello, the wife of Don Punchinello, the head of the entire NYC mob. This plot element in the game is crucial because Mona joins up with Max later because she wants to get revenge on the Don because he kills her sister, Angela. She's a much more compelling character in the game, too, because it's not ever 100% clear she's on Max's side. It's obvious she has a weakness for him, as well, because when she meets up with Max at Aesir Plaza, Ms. Horne orders her to kill Max over the loudspeaker. Mona declines, and is shot to death for it(or is she?). They left out some great plot that could've added more to the movie. B.B.- Where do I freaking begin. This is one character that absolutely annoyed the hell out of me. In the game, B.B. and Max were just friends. Pretty good friends, but they were also the same age. He did not kill Max's wife in the game. I like Beau Bridges as an actor...but he shouldn't even been in this movie, or in a different role. In the game B.B. was just a crooked cop who nearly offs Max until Max realizes that B.B. is a corrupt cop, and he ends up killing B.B. on his wave of destruction. I think this may have been done to be like other movies of the genre, with the father figure type who ends up betraying you....but this shouldn't have been like other movies. It's freaking Max Payne. Jim Bravura- Here's another character who was raped and pillaged by the pen of Beau Thorne. In the game, Bravura is a major character. However, he is the head of the police department, not some Internal Affairs detective. Ludacris should never have been in this movie. In the game, Bravura leads the cops who are constantly chasing Max and trying to end his path of destruction against the Mob. I think the massive changes they made to this character were part of a series of bad decisions that contributed to it not being that great of a movie. Alex Balder- Yet ANOTHER character freaking re-worked for the worse. In the game, Alex and Max were nothing but the best of friends. They never had that stupid tension that I believe was purely to make up for the lack of plot due to not sticking to the game's story close enough. Alex works for the DEA in the game. He's always trying to recruit Max to go undercover for him, but Max never agrees until his wife and kids get killed so Max can find those responsible. Max is undercover 3 years. On the night where Max decides to go on this rampage, he meets with Alex. It's the first time Alex has seen Max in 3 years. Alex is shot by a mob assassin, and the murder is pinned on Max, another crime that makes the cops go after Max. Max's cover didn't help either, because Alex basically rewrote Max's rap sheet to make him look like the mobster type so he could go undercover. Nobody even knew Max was undercover besides Alex. In the movie, terrible casting choice, terrible reworking, just bottomline terrible. Jack Lupino- Frankly I'm surprised this character wasn't reworked much. In the game the only difference is Lupino was never in the Marines, and never a test subject of Valkyr. The one in the game was a little more crazy and occult obsessed. Great casting choice for the movie, and for what part he played he did well. Nicole Horne- Great casting choice. However, she should've died at the end of the movie. The game ending ends dramatically with Max bringing down a freaking metal tower on her helicopter before she can escape, and the flaming wreckage raining down to the bottom of Aesir Plaza. Nicole's character was under-utilized in the movie, I think. Natasha- Nonexistent in the game. Added little to the movie plot besides being hot. Jason Colvin- Nonexistent in the game. A good addition to the movie, in my opinion. However I though it was bullcrap that he could get punched so much and bleed so little. Lincoln Denauf- a stereotypical character who added little to the plot, but didn't hurt the movie in my opinion. Nonexistent in the game. Another thing I did not like was the snow. Sometimes it looked like pillow feathers! In the game, the snow was almost a character. During Max's rampage, the snow was a howling blizzard, almost reflecting Max's rage. In the game it's the worst snow NYC has seen in many years. In the movie it's much more calm. At the end, after Max kills Ms. Horne, the snow seems to lose its intensity, almost as a conclusion to all that's happened. Also I found it insulting to the viewer, in the scene where Max jumps backwards to shoot his shotgun, that the other guy misses by like 15 feet! What the eff! Nobody shoots that bad unless they are blind! All in all, I would say that Beau Thorne clearly never played the games, John Moore clearly never played the games, or at the very least they didn't give a crap whether they stuck to the story or not. Shame! Definitely not too bad of a film, but a great example of why you should stick mostly to the source material. Here's hoping this never gets greenlit as a sequel.

I've not seen it yet, but now I'm kinda sad. It looked promising, but apparently it's just as bad as all the previous game-based movies ever made. Lord I wish someone would just make a decent game-based film already.

In my defense, NERD SMASHER (lame). I'm a nerd through and through. But nothing's wrong with that. Why is it so bad for me to be a nerd? Why do you hate them so much? Is it because you lack the mental capacity to understand most of the things Nerds do on a regular basis? What strikes me as interesting is that you're on Firstshowing.net a site run by nerds, read by nerds, and talked about by nerds. Actual professionals don't use words like I do? What? It's a free and open forum. I've spoken to many critics, professional and amateur and when they're speaking like regular people they use all kinds of language, vulgar and otherwise. You won't find a professional critic swearing simply because the medium they're distributing their works through usually doesn't allow for it. If you check out my webpage on spill.com and see their reviews you'll find that they're swearing a lot, and they're professional critics. We saw Korey, who's the main character on spill reviews movies with a simple rating system... the worst rating a movie can get is a "FUCK YOU". According you he's not a professional because he uses bad words, yet this weekend he interviewed James Cromwell (who is a very nice gentleman who happens to swear a lot), Tyrese, and Danny Boyle. But he's not a professional right? Cuz he says fuck? Calm down dude. Don't let nerds get to you so much. I don't have an over inflated ego at all. I understand that my opinion isn't one that truly matters, yet i have fans who appreciate it so i continue to write what I think about movies. If you don't like critics, professional or not, then stay the fuck off a website like FS, because that's all this is... it's all a bunch of nerdy critics talking about shit you don't care about.

I went to see it tonight and could not have been more disappointed. Ive been waiting for this to come out ever since first showing announced posted the preview. Too bad they wasted the only action in the whole movie in the preview. Not to mention they didnt follow the game hardly at all. All together it was nothing more then a complete let down.

Honestly, has there ever been a good movie based on a video game? Its like they slap these things together.

There are very subtle sound effects I particular loved including the reloading effect and the fire drums burning sound. BTW totally loved Rosco Street even if the villains don't attack Payne in the toilet.

who the hell is mila kunis?? anyway..I will watch the movie ..let's see how it is

The first hour of the movie was completly boring and the action scenes sucked they didnt know how to work bullet time into it. Nothing compared to the game, bad acting. WASTE of time they could have a made this a wicked movie, they should of followed the game more

I thought it was HORRIBLE! May Payne was the most ho-hum big-budget, high-profile film I've seen since Batman & Robin. I just sat there (well, me and the entire theater actually) numbed by one completely boring, nonsensical scene after another. Couple that with some of the worst acting I've seen this year and it left me wishing I had some way of getting my money back. Mila Kunis -- can we all just admit right now that there is not a single cast member from That 70's Show who can act worth a damn? C'mon, people! The silly plot and the shoddiest on-screen police squad work since Ace Ventura: Pet Detective certainly didn't help anything. It took them 3 years to notice the huge tattoos on those dead peoples' bodies? Really? You mean a seasoned detective wouldn't have noticed dead people showing up with the same wrist tattoo? You mean the real police HAVEN'T been keeping databases of gang tattoos for the past 10+ years? Max Payne the videogame was a triumph of style over substance. It was seriously only good for maybe 20 minutes worth of entertainment. I'd be hard-pressed to piece together any 20 minutes of footage from Max Payne the movie and make it entertaining. This thing doesn't even succeed in the style category. Dressing all your bad ass characters in black leather and covering the bad guys in tattoos is so 20th century. So is having the villian being the evil mega-corporation trying to cover up the horrible effects of the wonderdrugs they were trying to peddle. Although that did work pretty well in Serenity. But at the end of this I was left with more questions than answers. And not the good kinds of questions either. These are all "giant plot hole" questions that no self-respecting screenwriter would want his audience to have to be asking after a showing. For instance.... I still don't know why Max Payne's wife had to be killed. Or HER BABY for that matter! Had the baby seen too much? Did the baby say something to make the bad guys mad? Did the baby swallow some evidence and they were trying to cut it out of her? Someone explain to me why some guys who were just trying to cover up some corporate wrongdoings felt the need to kill the baby? What was the point of that besides pissing off Max Payne? Was that just supposed to show they were psychopaths? Why not just ambush Max at home and kill the entire family while you're at it? And what was up with that pseudo-Russian gang Mila Kunis was hanging out with at the begining of the movie? Were they dealing Valkyr? If not, why were they at the lame "dinner party" that Max's snitch was hosting where the partygoers were getting high in the back? And where were they getting Valkyr from in the first place?!? The big bad drug company considered it a failure, so wouldn't they have stopped producing it? Was all the Valkyr that we saw in the film just what was left of the trial supply? What the hell kind of drug company makes such a huge amount of expensive drugs that are still undergoing trials? What the hell kind of drug company opens itself up to what would be some crushing civil litigation and possible criminal prosecution by allowing the failed drug they produced to get out of their hands and onto the streets? I have 100 more questions concerning plot elements and character motivations, but this movie is honestly not worth any more of my time than what it's already robbed me of. James Bond, save me!!

Kent, You sir, are a douche.

It put me to sleep...simply terrible.

they did the opposite of hitman in this film. hitman had good action scenes but the story wasn't about clones and shit. In Max payne, the story is about the guy that lost his family but the action sucked.

ya it was a disapointment being a huge fan of the game, but it wasnt a terrible film as most of u make it, they never should have changed the story and there needed alot more action, epecially bullet time. but its looked and felt alot like the game, whalberg and chirs o donnel are way better then u people think (especially the kid u says whalberg hasnt been good since 3 kings, hello u obviously havent seen the departed). the story though different was a good pace, it was always entertaining and fun. the dream sequences were used way better than i thought and made perfect sense, so all in all it doesnt bring the pain nor live up to the hype and fun of the game but its still a good movie, not the best but easily not the worst. i refuse to support fox and john moore any more though for ruining what could have been better if not amazing. (john moore is now one little step up of uwe boll, and thats not a good thing)

Didnt care for it. I echo one of the sentiments above. Site needs more reviews. Alex stop travelling the globe with festivals with movies many will not be able to see and put up some reviews. And we need some events here in the Springs.

Game was great movie sucks not closse off what the story cut bye iff the moviemaker's playt the game from start to end pitty :S

I'm a big fan of both games. I never had a good feeling about this movie especially when I found out who they cast as Max Payne. I'm sorry but he doesn't look like Max Payne for starters and his personality doesn't fit either. When I saw the first photos from the movie I thought.. sure they have the visual style down but that's NOT Max Payne doing that shoot dodge. The girl who plays Mona is even worse.. she's not even remotely like the character in the game.. especially in the second game. There wasn't anything supernatural in the games so if they put that into the movie that's another strike. The closest they got to anything like that was drug induced hallucinations... but those didn't have any demons in them. It's kind of funny too.. they remove the demons from Doom and add them to Max Payne. I guess it may be because if they stuck too close to the plot of the games it'd be even more of a standard generic action flick. To be honest I have always thought that it wasn't such a good idea to make a movie from this game to begin with. The stories worked well in the games but I've always seen them as adapting and interpreting certain action movies like John Woo's movies into a game. So converting that into a movie is like a reverse conversion or doing a copy of a copy. It becomes a pale imitation of the original especially if they try to condense hours of story from two games into one movie. I've always felt that a movie based off the game is unnecessary. We already had Max Payne the movie in the form of the movies that the games where based on in my opinion. By the way those complaining about Mona's part being small. It was very small in the first game as well. She only appeared in two plot points tops and it wasn't until the second game that she was a major character and a good one at that. Not that I'm defending it or anything.

yeah so honestly i went and saw this movie with some friends and the moment the lights turned back on i asked myself why in the world i spent 8.50 on a movie that put me to sleep. i wasnt thrilled, i wasnt intrigued, i wasnt enthused. i was BORED. i didnt fall asleep however. you can thank Carmike Theatres here in good ol Fort Boring, Indiana. Just so they know ill be contacting their management letting them know i want their sound turned down so my seat doesnt vibrate when something happens. this movie doesnt belong in the box office. it made no sense. sorry, but you needed another writer.

Movie wasnt 2 bad but i prefer the game which im currently playing again, and reviewing for a college assignment =D #15-Cody Sorry but Matrix was 1991 whereas Max Payne was 2001. Sorry but they got bullet time from the Matrix and was the 1st game to use bullet time, so i'd advice not slagging people off for it.