Max Payne (2008) - An impressive atmosphere worthy of a film noir meet an intriguing story with a few length and a surprisingly solid acting - 8/10 (23/05/12)

Even though the movie got a bunch of negative critics by fans of the game series, I happen to like "Max Payne" a lot for different reasons.

First of all, the movie is visually stunning and develops an amazingly intense and constant film noir atmosphere.

Second, the acting is surprisingly good for this kind of movie and offers a couple of very intriguing characters that represent the outsiders of a pitiless society. I never had a too favourable opinion of actors such as Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis or Olga Kurylenko but they are very convincing in this movie and almost left me speechless at some points. The fact that many stars have some minor roles or cameo appearances keeps the movie quite interesting and I like to see celebrities such as Ludicrous or Nelly Furtado in this film.

The third strong point of the flick is its story. The plot is quite dark and mysterious and offers some minor surprises. It's certainly not the script of the year and in the end, there are some predictable scenes and also a couple of lengths in this stylish anti-hero blockbuster but it's definitely better than I thought and easily beats many similar superhero movies that flood the markets nowadays or adoptions from computer games or visual novels. From that categorization, I would even say that this movie is one of the best of its kind.

I must admit that this movie focuses a lot more on the atmospheric part than on stunning action scenes as there were in the games. I think this is a positive thing for a movie and adds a lot of depth and originality to this adaption. The few action sequences are still well done but not quite outstanding. From that point if view the games were definitely more gripping and innovating.

In the end, I have seen this movie a couple of times by now and find it all very entertaining, visually impressive and intriguing from the beginning to the end. Anybody that likes "Sin City" or "The Spirit" might adore this movie and I even think its the most profound feature of these three.