Review: Max Payne

First-time screenwriter Beau Thorne (“a recent graduate of the University of Texas film program” boasts 20th Century Fox) adapts the Max Payne video games for a first-person shooter- kicker- puncher- stabber film starring Mark Wahlberg from last year’s “Shooter.” As the title cop, he battles visions: his own flashbacks to the awful day he came home and found his wife and child slaughtered, and he battles hallucinations in the heads of uber-warriors and others addicted to a new blue potion on the streets. It’s a prototype synthesized by the pharmaceutical corporation that employed his late wife. Director John Moore (2006’s “The Omen” and “Behind Enemy Lines”) attacks his audience with game-grade noir urban decor and pagan Norse birdmen with talons. These fearsome winged things transport righteous warriors to an afterlife, but they also seem keen on slashing civilians to bloody bits. This is a juvenile quest for a just revenge, with a detour for truth about the evil a corporation can do with ex-cops on its payroll. Amidst the din and CGI onslaught, there’s a tiny idea of note: the blue potion was designed to fortify U.S. soldiers with supernatural ferocity in the war on terror. With Chris O’Donnell, Beau Bridges, Mila Kunis, Olga Kurylenko and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges. 100m. (Bill Stamets)