Rating of
2.5/4
Great action and poor acting with some lame parts
Josh C - wrote on 10/19/08
Let me say first, that I had never played this video game. I guess that matters because I generally liked this movie but the person I watched it with, a big fan of the game, hated it.
It isn't a great movie, but what are you expecting? The movie is based on a video game, and like most movies that are based on a game or comic the characters and their actions are a bit over the top. This one is no different.
The movie can be broken into two parts: the first hour (the good part) and the last 30 minutes (the crap part). The good part was good because the action was top-notch, the characters were interesting, the story unraveled nicely and Mark Wahlberg didn't annoy me. This started to change near the end when the story just started to go way over the top and the dialog of Mark Wahlberg started to get really lame. There were scenes that I found myself laughing over because it was so bad. I could also here comments in the theatre of people making fun of certain lines. That is never a good sign.
For instance there was a scene when they were going to kill Max Payne and make it look like a suicide. So they unhandcuff him and start strapping weights to his feet so he will drown in the lake. What the hell, it is bad enough that he looks like crap because he was just beat up, knocked out and dragged there. But they seriously think that it is going to look like a suicide with weights attached to his feet? It was scenes like this that helped to lower the films quality.
Still, despite all the flaws I liked the movie and thought that as an action film it was successful.
