Max Payne hits theatres today

NBC
Published: October 17, 2008

Mark Wahlberg is back in theaters this weekend in the new film ‘Max Payne’, based on the video game.
Max Payne is based on a video game and deals with a New York cop suspected of being complicit in his wife and child’s murder three years earlier.

He’s been assigned to the cold case area of the police station, in other words, Siberia.

Mark Wahlberg, with an appropriate continual scowl has that role, here taking care of three punks at the start of the movie in a subway station.

It’s just to show you how good he is at action and one of the punks has a tangential connection to the rest of the plot.

Ukrainian born Mila Kunis, of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” becomes his reluctant ally after her party girl sister is murdered.

Gradually the plot comes into focus.

He’s pursuing those behind a sinister corporation manufacturing a concoction which turns soldiers into invincible fighting machines but with horrific side effects.

Wahlberg has a knack of understanding a character, even a familiar one, and giving it his own twist.

Beau Bridges is his father’s old partner and his mentor on the force, now head of security at the suspect company.

And busy Ludacris works for internal affairs, and gives one of his best performances.
Movie critic Jeffrey Lyons said “Max Payne” works as entertainment, no more, because it has an amazing graphic novel look about it, evoking the “Batman” movies and the films of Tim Burton.

Mark Wahlberg is a likable action star and the movie never takes itself seriously.