Film

Somewhere in Hollywood, in a locked drawer, there’s a plot synopsis of Max Payne, explaining how grieving tough cop Max (Wahlberg) seeks his wife’s killer and the trail leads him to the pharmaceutical company for which she worked. The synopsis clarifies, perhaps, just how a leather-duster-wearing hottie assassin (Kunis) is connected to all this, and maybe it says why Detective Jim Bravura (Bridges) drifts in and out of the movie every 20 minutes or so. It might even explain the connection between a supersoldier-producing drug and the supernatural angels of death that flutter around the characters like really menacing black rags.

But no one actually cares if the story adds up in a movie based on a video game. Audiences expect to have their nerve endings stimulated (or frayed), as they will be by the aggressive, bass-heavy sound mix. Wahlberg seems utterly at ease, even when he’s forced to do half his scenes in either pouring rain or aesthetically pleasing snow (John Woo should sue). The rest of the cast has little chance to make an impression amid all the mayhem. They appear, say a few baffling lines, and disappear. Maybe they’re holed up in their trailers figuring out the plot.