“Max Payne” is a movie based on a videogame of the same name and I use the word ‘based’ in the loosest possible way. While the “Max Payne” games are fast-paced and enjoyable, this film is slow and boring. It’s even worse than most videogame-based movies.

In this film, the titular character, who is played appallingly by Mark Wahlberg (“Ted”, “The Other Guys”), is out to find out who killed his wife and child three years earlier and he’ll stop at nothing. For a videogame series brimming with engaging action sequences, the film only features a few and awful ones at that. The film is essential just a revenge story and could have easily been called something else but that wouldn’t have saved… not by a long stretch.

Mark Wahlberg is terrible here as there is no feeling in his performance; I don’t blame him though because this movie is written so poorly his contributions wouldn’t have helped out all that much. It’s really sad when a videogame can create a character with more personality and of more interest than a movie with big time actor can. The other characters are completely uninteresting and there aren’t enough of them being shot down by Max Payne.

“Max Payne” is one depressing and dull scene after another. Fans of the game will hate it and so will average moviegoers because it does just about nothing right. Videogame-based movies just don’t work as either they follow the game too closely and don’t feel like a movie or the deviate too much from the source material and produce some oddball creation that nobody feels satisfied with and “Max Payne” definitely belongs in the latter. Being in the genre it is, the film is swimming against the current but it doesn’t even do the lightest of paddling.