Movie Review: “Max Payne”

Mark Wahlberg says hi to your mother with Mila Kunis in “Max Payne.” 

Rating: 51 

Measured against the low bar set by video game adaptations, “Max Payne” serves as a minor victory, boasting a discernable story, solid supporting performances and an aesthetic that owes just as much to film noir as it does to cut-rate “Matrix” effects. Yes, someone cared enough to make an actual movie based on a “third-person shooter” instead of just a series of slow-motion spinning bullet shots.

Detective Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) snapped and got shuffled down to the cold case repository after his wife and newborn son were killed in a home invasion. Max spends his off-duty hours scouring for clues and shaking down junkies addicted to virulent new street drug in a New York City where the ’90s renaissance never happened, a real hellhole.

The murder of party girl Natasha Sax (Olga Kurylenko) puts Max under immediate police scrutiny — his wallet was found on the body — and he finds an unlikely partner in her sister Mona (Mila Kunis), a mobbed-up hitwoman. Max soon finds himself wrapped in a conspiracy involving his wife’s former employer, a pharmaceutical company, and a shadowy figure named Lupino (Amaury Nolasco) with wing tattoos on his face.