by Alex Bentley

Max Payne does itself in with a complicated story and not putting in enough of what made the video game so popular in the first place.

Studios have been trying for years to translate successful video games to the big screen, adaptations that rarely, if ever, work. The Resident Evil and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider series are the only ones that could be called halfway effective, and even those didn't bring in the bucks, as none of them, save the original Tomb Raider ($131 million), came close to crossing the $100 million mark.

But here they go again with Max Payne, based on the popular third-person shooter game that originally came out in 2001. Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is an NYPD detective who has been on a seemingly never-ending quest for vengeance after his wife and child were murdered several years earlier. His department, of course, views him as washed-up and sticks him in the Cold Case division.

He catches a break, though, when a former snitch of his leads him down a trail that leads to a drug called Valkyr, a liquid that makes its users feel like nothing can hurt them, but also gives them fiery hallucinations. The drug is made by a company called Aesir, for which – surprise, surprise – his wife used to work.

Um, Max, might want to look behind you.

From there, it’s just a matter of trying to see how far the conspiracy goes, with Payne alternately getting help and being blocked by a variety of people, including Internal Affairs Detective Jim Bravura (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Aesir honcho and family friend BB Hensley (Beau Bridges), and Mona Sax (Mila Kunis), a mysterious girl with ties to the criminal underworld.

The main problem with Max Payne is that it doesn’t have a clear sense of direction. Characters come and go arbitrarily, often showing up just when they’re needed most (or least, as the case may be). Then there’s the idea of the effects of Valkyr – it seems clear that the great winged beasts dripping fire that its users see are hallucinations, but one particularly grisly murder appears to be attributed to them, not an actual person.

It’s interesting that the producers chose to tone down the film in comparison to the game in order to get a PG-13 rating. The action doesn’t really get going until the second half of the film, and even then it’s muted due to the no blood rule of the rating. Also disappointing is the relative lack of stylization in the film. The game was hyped around its use of “bullet time,” a feature that allowed users to slow down game play. It’s understandable that overusing it would lead to inevitable Matrix comparisons, but hardly using it at all is just as big a mistake. It’s Max Payne’s signature, and it needed to be in the film more.

The badge is about the only thing believable of Ludacris being a detective.

Wahlberg is adequate as Payne. One wishes he would’ve brought a little more pathos along with his typical angry glowering since, you know, his central reason for being is finding the person who killed his family. And there’s something just a tad off about him being an action hero; it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s wrong, but the label just doesn’t seem to fit him. And Chris Bridges is completely out of his element as Bravura; he always seems to be acting like some archetype of what a movie detective should be, rather than playing the role at hand.

Max Payne does itself in with a complicated story that gets more confusing by randomly inserting and taking away characters, as well as not putting in enough of what made the video game so popular in the first place. Action films should feel like escapism, not work.