History YMMV / MaxPayne

* WTHCastingAgency:
** Many felt this way about Creator/MarkWahlberg as Max Payne as he didn't capture the cheesy charm of Sam Lake's Max, the hard-boiled detective look of Timothy Gibbs' Max, nor the hard-bitten, world-wariness of Creator/JamesMcCaffrey's voice acting. Some felt that [=McCaffrey=] should have played Max, especially since the film just had in him a cameo role as an FBI agent, something which seems even more of a major missed opportunity in hindsight after [=McCaffrey=] also did the motion capture for Max in [[VideoGame/MaxPayne3 the third game]] and by all means proved that he could also pull off the physical part of the character.
** In the games, Jim Bravura is a 60-something year old no-nonsense white man. In the movie, he is played by the rapper Music/{{Ludacris}}.
** Creator/MilaKunis as Mona Sax. She really can't pull off the ProfessionalKiller FemmeFatale. Arguably, Creator/OlgaKurylenko, who plays her sister, would have been a better choice.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: Every single game that comes out with BulletTime now is met with dubious cries of "oh, ''another'' one?" Though the third game averted this; it received high scores from critics, and while fans were more mixed, "bullet time has already been done" was almost never a complaint.

** [[BigBad Nicole Horne]] is the [[CorruptCorporateExecutive ice-cold CEO]] of Aesir Corporation, using her resources and connections to perpetuate her atrocities. A former member of the Inner Circle who headed up Project Valhalla, Horne oversaw the creation of [[FantasticDrug Valkyr]], using innocent people as test subjects and driving them insane, notably siccing three of the drugged up victims onto the Payne household to murder Michelle Payne and her [[WouldHurtAChild infant daughter]] after Michelle [[HeKnowsTooMuch accidentally learned of the project]]--later mocking Max over their deaths and forcing him to relive their murders simply for cruelty. Continuing to experiment on tortured captives with Valkyr years after, Horne begins marketing Valkyr into the drug community of New York, using [[TheDon Angelo Punchinello]] as a figurehead to spread Valkyr far and wide, uncaring of the thousands of lives it claimed. Horne used Punchinello to carry out a variety of assassinations and crimes in her name, murdering the man when she lost use of him and later enacting "Operation Dead Eyes" to cover her tracks, entailing the wholesale slaughter of each and every one of her former partners, employees, and test subjects in Project Valhalla, as well as the entirety of the Inner Circle.
** [[DiscOneFinalBoss Angelo Punchinello]] is [[TheDon the Boss of the Punchinello Crime Family]]. A mobster with countless deaths on his orders, Punchinello tries to wipe out [[TheMafiya the Russian Mob]] while enforcing the power structure of his Family with such monsters as Jack Lupino and the Trio. Under Nicole Horne, Punchinello sees the mass distribution of Valkyr with no care for the minds it destroys. In his personal life, Punchinello is a [[DomesticAbuser sadistic wife beater]] who [[TilMurderDoUsPart tortures his own wife Lisa to death]].

** [[VideoGame/MaxPayne1 First game]]: [[BigBad Nicole Horne]] is the [[CorruptCorporateExecutive ice-cold CEO]] of Aesir Corporation, using her resources and connections to perpetuate her atrocities. A former member of the Inner Circle who headed up Project Valhalla, Horne oversaw the creation of [[FantasticDrug Valkyr]], using innocent people as test subjects and driving them insane, notably siccing three of the drugged up victims onto the Payne household to murder Michelle Payne and her [[WouldHurtAChild infant daughter]] after Michelle [[HeKnowsTooMuch accidentally learned of the project]]--later mocking Max over their deaths and forcing him to relive their murders simply for cruelty. Continuing to experiment on tortured captives with Valkyr years after, Horne begins marketing Valkyr into the drug community of New York, using [[TheDon Angelo Punchinello]] as a figurehead to spread Valkyr far and wide, uncaring of the thousands of lives it claimed. Horne used Punchinello to carry out a variety of assassinations and crimes in her name, murdering the man when she lost use of him and later enacting "Operation Dead Eyes" to cover her tracks, entailing the wholesale slaughter of each and every one of her former partners, employees, and test subjects in Project Valhalla, as well as the entirety of the Inner Circle.

* MisaimedFandom: With the BulletTime feature to slow down the action, helping you savor it while gaining an advantage and Max being able to mow down armies of villains with only a legal slap on wrist in the long run, the games might be interpreted as "Being a CowboyCop is badass." However, this overlooks the psychological toll that is inflicted on Max which Max tries to repress with pain killers, cigarettes and alcohol in ''Max Payne 3'' where Max is almost an EmptyShell at the start.

* MisaimedFandom: With the BulletTime feature to slow down the action, helping you savor it while gaining an advantage and Max being able to mow down armies of villains with only a legal slap on wrist in the long run, the games might be interpreted as "Being a CowboyCop is badass." However, this overlooks the psychological toll that is inflicted on Max which Max tries to repress with pain killers, cigarettes and alcohol.

** In the first game during the fourth chapter named "Caught in the Crossfire", there's a gas canister that can be shot in one of the rooms. The V-head junkie death cry will randomly occur sometimes when it's shot and set off... for some reason.

** Some cosmetic branching paths for the choices Max can make lend themselves to the player playing Max with their own interpretation. In ''2'' during the first mission, do you let the Cleaner draw his weapon first or do you just [[DirtyCop blow him away right off the bat before he even draws a deadly weapon?]] In ''3'', do you variably hesitate to shoot [=Anthony DeMarco=] for attacking a woman or do you [[TriggerHappy unhesitatingly fire your gun]] right after your draw? [[spoiler:Armando Becker]] is also fatally disfigured by a grenade after Max shoots it out of the sky and you can either let him have a drawn-out death or shoot him which ends his [[MercyKill suffering immediately]] and can be interpreted as Max not sinking to the level of enemies and causing drawn-out deaths.

** '''Shooting the V-head Junkies'''. The Hilarious over the top [[DeathWail Death Cries]] they make [[https://youtu.be/F5xks5ePoaU?t=29 when shooting them]] can make anyone laugh and give a healthy does of satisfaction. While it can come across as [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential kind of mess-up]] to some it's still entertaining to do. Burning enemies also gives the before mentioned [[DeathWail death sounds]].

* FriendlyFandoms: With [[Franchise/JohnWick John Wick]]. Makes sense since both franchises are neo-noir crime thrillers with middle-aged, world-weary protagonists, who both have lost their love ones, have racked up massive bad guy body counts thanks to their insane shooting skills, and face against large criminal conspiracies trying to kill them.