Wow, what a spectacularly disappointing movie. After the excellent trailer, I was looking forward to this one. But boy oh boy, what a lame film. If it wasn’t for some nice cinematography and visual work, I’d rank this film even lower.

Writing: I know it’s easy to criticize any movie that’s based on a video game for poor writing, but this one is a complete dead weight mess. Every single piece of dialog is completely lame, and the plotting is at best formulaic. At worst, it’s a jumbled up, narrative mess. Despite having some elements and ideas that should make a narrative at least partially interesting – or at least create a memorable character or two – this movie is devoid of anything of the sort. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t offensively bad, like Crank or some such. It’s just that while watching it, I couldn’t possibly care what happened next. Nor did I even remotely care about any character in the film. The script is credited to somebody named Beau Thorne, and this is his sole writing credit on IMDB at this point.

Production: I think the one thing that’s of any interest in this film is probably also its primary undoing. Everything about it feels like the effort was 99% about storyboards and 1% about anything else. I won’t deny that there are a few great looking sequences. Heck, that’s what makes the trailer work (you’re far better off just watching the trailer). But you need more than a look and a few interesting looking sequences for a movie to work. And while it may look impressive, most of the look is very derivative. It’s easy to pick out elements you’ve seen before in films like Sin City, The Matrix, Constantine, Dark City, Hitman and others (all of which are very much superior films to Max Payne). I’ve liked director John Moore’s previous films (Behind Enemy Lines, Flight Of The Phoenix and The Omen), but this one falls totally flat. Granted, with one being a pretty mindless action film and two being remakes, I guess he hasn’t gone out of his way to strive for originality. This one certainly ain’t gonna help matters.

Cast: I don’t think the cast is particularly to blame here. They are done no favors by the script, with confusing, plodding characters that have some of the flattest dialog in recent memory. Wahlberg manages to get the job done, but this role is definitely beneath his potential. Mila Kunis gets second billing for a character that’s ultimately peripheral to the story (seriously, her character could be completely written out, and I doubt it would make any difference). She makes the role good looking, but is also given nothing in the script department to work with. Beau Bridges gives it his best, but his character is a little bit overly obvious from the beginning, because it gets a little bit too much attention for such a seemingly inconsequential character. Chris O’Donnell and Donal Logue do an adequate job with their supporting roles. And former Hitman co-star and upcoming Bond girl Olga Kurylenko makes her role look good (though her role is pretty much just intended to do that). Then there’s “Ludacris” as a cardboard cut-out detective character. I had no idea who the guy was when he came on screen, but the other audience members at the midnight screening I was at all made fun of him when he first appeared on screen, so I assumed it was some rap star I was completely oblivious to.

Music: Having scored John Moore’s previous two films, Flight Of The Phoenix and The Omen, composer Marco Beltrami is utilized again for this film. I’m a huge fan of Beltrami. And while this is far from his best work, it does a good enough job. Beltrami is done no favors with the material he’s given to work with. One of Beltrami’s frequent collaborators, Buck Sanders, is given co-composer credit on this film. Sanders has done plenty of synth programming, score producing and occasional co-writing of metarial for Beltrami. I’m guessing Sanders probably did some of the more electronic based cues in this score.