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I expected Max Payne, the latest video game to film adaptation to come down the pike, to be a lot of things – flimsy, cheesy, cliché and derivative (which it was). But I would have been okay with all that if it was a guilty pleasure type of fun. But the one thing I didn’t expect, and the one thing I cannot abide, was for the movie to be boring - Max Payne is downright dull and not really any fun at all. The mystery that the entire story hinges on isn’t engaging whatsoever; it unfolds too clumsily to hold our interest, being both horribly paced and unnecessarily obtuse. I’m still not sure exactly why Max Payne’s wife and baby were slaughtered, and that was theoretically the whole point of the entire movie.

But the biggest problem is that Max Payne (both the film and the character) takes itself far too seriously. Did director John Moore really think that first time screenwriter Beau Thorne had turned in such a groundbreaking screenplay that he should attempt to imbue it with such a ponderous, self important tone? The film is basically the definition of uneven. It tries to have it both ways, hoping to be somehow both an action packed, implausible fantasy and a solemn, noir-ish tragedy - but any effort towards gritty realism becomes laughable when we see someone with a name as silly as ‘Max Payne’ get shot at literally hundreds of times, at close range, with all manner of shotgun and machine gun, and never get hit (for just one of many examples).

In Sin City, we can cheer when Marv takes impossible beatings and performs completely improbable acts, since he is running around in a cartoon world hunting a seemingly superhuman cannibal who preys on prostitutes with the help of an insane Cardinal. When Max Payne is in present day New York City, tormented over the brutal loss of his wife and baby and investigating a high reaching conspiracy at his wife’s former employer, the script doesn’t give itself the same leeway. The somber parts make all the over the top flourishes seem out of place at best and pandering at worst, but there are enough of them to also completely negate any character based moments or realistic touches the film tries to impart. We simply don’t care about Max Payne or his plight – which would be fine if we were being entertained. But the film drags itself down with its stubborn refusal to acknowledge its own stupidity.

Marky Mark Wahlberg does his best to elevate the material, but the material he’s been given is just too shitty. One can’t even blame Mila Kunis - laughable as her performance may be – because she is simply miscast; it’s pretty much impossible for her to come off as intimidating seeing as how she’s two feet tall. A super stylized look (think a more realistic, but still pulpy, version of the aforementioned Sin City) is about all this film has going for it, if you like that sort of thing, but even if you do - and I eat that shit up in most cases - it’s not nearly enough to make Max Payne remotely watchable.

Grade: D

- Jeff Latta