Max PayneMovie Reviews

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Avg. Critic Score: 31 out of 100 Generally unfavorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
15 Iffy for 15+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 40
    The New York Times | A.O. Scott

    Max's righteous anger finds various allies and targets, though it is not always clear who is which. They are played by Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges and Ludacris with just enough panache and expressiveness to uphold the (increasingly irrelevant) distinction between a movie and a video game. Read full review

  • 38
    USA Today | Claudia Puig

    Max Payne couldn't be more appropriately named. Sitting through this stylish-looking but derivative, vacuous and bullet-riddled movie inflicts maximum pain. Read full review

  • 30
    Washington Post |

    This highly stylized adaptation of the popular Max Payne video game is 70 percent dark, snowy atmospherics and 30 percent loud, violent action. Read full review

  • 30
    The Hollywood Reporter | Kirk Honeycutt

    A banal revenge melodrama-cum-detective story, but fans of the video game on which it is based should not be alarmed. Read full review

  • 30
    Variety | Justin Chang

    Stylishly made, armed to the teeth and ludicrous in the extreme. Read full review

  • 25
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle

    With its flat story, numbed-out protagonist, and faux artistic lighting and set design - everything is dark or moody or darkishly moody or moodily dark - Max Payne seems a good half hour longer than its running time. Read full review

  • 25
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    If you stay and watch the endless end credits, there's a short scene that hints a sequel is coming. That's what I call real pain. Read full review

  • 25
    Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

    It's just a grindingly inert death-wish thriller. Read full review

  • 25
    Boston Globe | Wesley Morris

    This is not a movie that has great passion for pleasures of the flesh. Its sexiest scenes involve bullets cutting through the air in the slowest motion possible. Read full review

  • 20
    Los Angeles Times |

    Turning video games into movies may be one way for studios to coax teenagers away from their laptops, but this time around, the results are miserable, in every sense of the word. Read full review

View more reviews for Max Payne on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 15+ Video game adaptation is bloody but boring.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this video game-based action movie -- which was originally rated R and still feels more like that than a PG-13 -- is extremely violent and loaded with images of characters shooting or being shot. The plot revolves around a major corporation murdering to protect the money it's making after turning a failed military performance-enhancing drug into a street drug. The lead character takes a couple of doses to take advantage of the drug's energizing properties after a near-fatal drowning, so the last 20 minutes of the film are seen, in part, through his hallucinatory perspective. In addition to the constant violence, the movie also has plenty of salty language, sexual content, and drinking.
  • Families can talk about why Hollywood turns video games into movies, and whether the (theoretically) interactive experience of playing a game is different from the more passive experience of watching a movie. Does violence impact you in different ways when you're participating in it vs. just watching it? How so? Families can also discuss revenge and vengeance -- movies glamorize them, but are they, in fact, ethical things to pursue when wronged? How else can people seek out justice?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: The lead character is motivated by the death of his wife and baby son. A major corporation is involved in bribery, murder, drug trafficking, and other criminal activity. The villain explains how committing murder made him feel liberated, as if all his problems could now be solved by force and will.
What to watch for
  • violence false5 Violence: Constant extreme violence, including shootouts, shootings, knife-fights, and fistfights; blood and dismembered body parts are shown; one sequence shows a close-up of fingernails being torn from the hands of a man at the edge of a building before he falls to his death; shotgun murders, slow-motion bullet entrances and exits, explosions, and more, with dead bodies visible on screen. The closing credits are over a computer-animated collage of guns being shot, reloaded, and so on.
  • sex false4 Sex: Some partial glimpses of naked breasts, panty-clad bottoms, and scantily clad women; indistinct flashes of a sex scene in a flashback. Kissing. An underwear-clad woman writhes on a bed and makes sexual advances, which are rebuffed.
  • language false3 Language: Strong language, including one non-sexual use of "f--k" also "s--t," "a--hole," "bitch," "piss," "hell," and more.
  • consumerism false1 Consumerism: A Macintosh computer is clearly visible.
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false4 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Characters drink hard liquor, wine, and beer to excess (some also drink more responsibly). A character poses with a cigarette but doesn't smoke it. An experimental military performance-enhancing drug is abused and sold as a street narcotic, with supporting characters suffering fierce cravings for it. The lead character takes two doses of it to rouse himself after a near-drowning, and viewers see his resulting violent hallucinations, including black-winged demonic angel-like beings. A major corporation traffics the drug on the street.
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

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Dave White

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