Remember that time I was optimistic about the Max Payne movie? And how I was strongly considering seeing it the night it opened?

Yeah, that didn’t happen. I dragged myself to a matinée showing on the day it got pulled from theaters. And you know what? It’s better that way.

Chalk this up as the film industry screaming quite loudly that They Do Not Play Video Games.

It’s not Marky Mark’s fault. It’s really not. For what it’s worth, his Max Payne was pretty decent, and probably the only really okay acting in the film. And he’s handy with a pump-action shotgun, too.

The real problem is that the filmmakers decided to take a perfectly nice video game and butcher it into a low-rate action film. This shouldn’t be a surprise, but I had hope.

I must admit, the gunfight scenes looked awesome. Despite projecting the impression throughout the film that the filmmakers had never actually played Max Payne, the fight scenes looked spot-on. Same bleak industrial scenery, same flurries of bullets. Not quite worthy of phantom button-mashing, but very true to the game.

But where was Bullet Time? You’d think the filmmakers would want to feature the most stand-out aspect of gameplay, but there were maybe two scenes (total screen time: about 9 seconds) of anything even remotely resembling Bullet Time. This was the biggest disappointment for me; the game was inspired by John Woo films, and then the movie goes ahead and ignores this entirely.

The script was a….creative interpretation. I understand that it’s not the easiest task to transfer the storyline of a video game into a screenplay, but the first hour of the film dragged on without actually revealing the plot in a clear manner. I found myself missing the game’s original story, because the corners cut (and interesting character changes…where were the Punchinellos?) didn’t do anything to tell the story in a concise or interesting way. It ended up being a confusing, boring start to a confusing (yet strangely predictable) action plot. For a Harry Potter film? Sure, make some character and plot cuts to fit the film into a watchable length. But here? The changes were totally useless. Major minus points for this.

And Holy Special Effects, Batman! I have no idea why the filmmakers decided to prioritize the CGI’ed Valkyr junkies’ hallucinations, but it’s very clear that they spent more time on this than on the actual story.

In short? Don’t waste your time. Go find a copy of the game instead – it’s much more enjoyable.