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The games:

  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • In-universe, the games play with the idea that it was Max himself who murdered his wife including his outright statements of such on occasion, making him a Villain Protagonist. However, a lot of the hints come from Max's dream sequences which are designed to Mind Screw the player, while the rest may just be Max's guilt over everything that's happened. The belief traces back to him brushing off his wife when she mentions the Valkyr files she's investigating to him, and his negligence got her killed, but even for Max that's taking his Survivor Guilt a bit far.
    • 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 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 unhesitatingly fire your gun right after your draw? 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 suffering immediately and can be interpreted as Max not sinking to the level of his enemies and causing a drawn-out death.
    • In the third game, Max' narration makes the entire ending rather surreal and so his state of mind is really hard to gauge. He might be The Brute, a Sociopathic Hero, an Übermensch, or an Emotional Bruiser inverting the Despair Event Horizon — a lot of things are hinted at, but trying to sum up his psychology can result in very simple or extremely complex conclusions.
    • Just what is the true nature of Vlad's relationship with Winterson? Was he actually in love with her, or was it just an act to manipulate her into helping him? Further, we see Vlad is a donator to a school to the blind, which is presumably how they met, since her son is blind. Was Vlad actually donating to the school out of the goodness of his heart and they met by chance, or was his goodwill to the school and her son a ploy to get close to her so he could begin his manipulations? We don't know how far back the relationship goes, so it could be either way. He makes a point that he feels he has to kill Max to avenge her as "a gentlemen", but this too could just be Vlad playing up the Man of Wealth and Taste act he gets a kick out of.
    • For that matter, what is Vlad's true personality actually like? Is he an insincere sociopathic schemer who never really liked Max and just wanted total power and wealth? He constantly uses the phrase "dearest of all my friends..." with several different people and even in the advertisement for his club, which implies he is a vacuous flatterer. His "I would fuck her" comment regarding Mona is instantly disliked by Max and implies Vlad is something of a people-user, a shallow and somewhat misogynistic person with delusions of grandeur. It also hints that he possibly doesn't care much about Winterson. He again seems cold and sadistic in the scene where he kills Vinnie, but we only have Max's nightmare scene to tell us that this was what really happened. However in the first game he respected Max and seemed to have a real code of honour, was this a front or did he feel he had to betray Max out of fear that he would take him down after Punchinello? Was his descent towards homicidal evil just a mirror image of Max's grief-driven rampage in the first game triggered by Max killing Winterson? The ending with "I was meant to be the hero..." seems to reference this. And was his obsession with power simply driven by being fed up with the games Nicole Horne and Alfred Woden were constantly playing? Overall he seems to be a very complicated character and it's unclear if he was truly sadistic and cruel or if he was simply anguished and cynical.
    • Winterson. Was she a nasty and hypocritical Dirty Cop who was condescending and fundamentally unlikable? Or was she actually very similar in her flaws to Max, but in love with a criminal on the opposite side of the fence to Mona? See Jerkass Woobie, below.
  • Anti-Climax Boss:
    • Kaufman, the near-mythical cleaner hitman that mooks warn you about through much of 2's first act. This is a game that at least attempts at realism, so he reacts to hand grenades thrown at his feet just like everyone else. To be fair he can take a lot more bullets than his mooks. Although he does seem to have the same health as the commandos later, suggesting it's a bullet proof vest rather than sheer badass.
    • Rico Muerte, a very forgettable boss from early in the first game is described by Max as being 'a regular Keyser Soze'. When you track him down, he has his pants around his ankles and is receiving some extra-special treatment from prostitute Candy Dawn. He immediately runs off and hides in the hallway. None of the mooks seem to notice or care about him, and the only reason he's even notable is because he's your very first enemy with an automatic weapon. You'll actually have more trouble with Candy Dawn, since she can not only shoot better than him, but also has more health.
    • Played straight and averted in the third game; Becker and his cohort aren't too tough themselves, the former being more of a mere survival gauntlet and the latter being that and a Puzzle Boss, but a couple of times throughout the game, Max encounters armored foes with heavy weapons who are nigh impossible to kill quickly without taking insane amounts of risks. This is especially the worst at the Imperial Palace, where you have about twenty seconds to kill a single one of these guys or die and get sent to the last checkpoint of the whole section; many players get stuck herenote .
    • A majority of the antagonists from the third game fall under here. Serrano and Anthony DeMarco are never fought onscreen, and both of them possibly pull a Karma Houdini. Milo Rego, Neves' Dragon, is killed in a cutscene where you have to Press X to Not Die four times. Neves himself is a Cutscene Boss who is abruptly shot in the head by Passos after he talks to Max for too long instead of just shooting him. Even Victor Branco is never fought; all you have to do is blow up his private jet with a grenade launcher after you've eradicated the rest of the enemies.
    • Nicole Horne from the first game. After fighting your way through her entire security detail, the final stage is a rooftop confrontation. She runs away to her helicopter and sics only a handful of goons on you when you destroy the first cable, who can all be taken out at once if you're still using the M79. After that, all that's left to do is snipe the second cable and fire another grenade at the radio tower, which will topple and destroy the chopper.
  • Awesome Music:
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Almost all of the TV shows in 3, but especially that soap opera about the baby with the backwards feet.
    • 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. It's easier if the Grenade, Grenade launcher or Molotov is used to shoot the canister.
  • Breather Level:
    • The dream levels... well, as much as can be allowed. They're nightmarish and sometimes feature some combat. The final one from the first game is an exception, due to its frustrating platforming segment.
    • The extremely brief level in the Punchinello Restaurant. Escaping the bombs going off around you is extremely fun, though.
    • The first visit to the Address Unknown funhouse in the second game.
    • The first half of ''A Hangover Sent Straight From Mother Nature" in the third game. No combat happens until you are about five minutes into the level.
    • The start of the second chapter in the second game mostly involves wandering around the police station interacting with people until the cleaners assault the place.
  • Catharsis Factor: Max Payne 1 has a lot of this. From shooting enemies with explosives like a Mad Bomber to the death cries of the enemies.
    • Shooting any enemy with the a Grenade or the Grenade Launcher will cause them to fly away from the impact. Bonus points for it being a One-Hit Kill.
    • Using Molotovs on enemies. Seeing the enemies flail around while on fire can get some laughs. Especially when the enemies are in groups.
    • Shooting the V-head Junkies. The Hilarious over the top Death Cries they make when shooting them can make anyone laugh and give a healthy dose of satisfaction. While it can come across as kind of mess-up to some it's still entertaining to do. Burning enemies also gives the before mentioned death sounds.
    • Putting in the cheat codes also give this off. Especially the all weapons cheat code. L1, L2, R1, R2 Triangle, Circle, X, Square. Have fun.
    • Hitting a gas canister and making it explode. Like the Grenades above, it's simple but fun.
  • Complete Monster:
    • First game:
      • Nicole Horne is the 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 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 infant daughter after Michelle 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 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.
      • Angelo Punchinello is the Boss of the Punchinello Crime Family. A mobster with countless deaths on his orders, Punchinello tries to wipe out 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 sadistic wife beater who tortures his own wife Lisa to death.
    • Max Payne 3:
      • Victor Branco is an aspiring but Corrupt Politician of São Paulo, and a member of the wealthy Branco family. He is also the hidden leader of the UFE, a law enforcement group he uses for his own ends, and the Crachá Preto paramilitary death squad, and the mastermind behind the assassinations on his brothers—one by burning alive—and the abduction of his sister-in-law. He is motivated by control of the family fortune and gaining sympathy for the election. He recruits Max as a bodyguard but really plans on making Max a fall guy for his criminal enterprises, which includes a secret ring where the poor of Brazil are kidnapped, held hostage, and harvested for their organs for the black market organ trade.
      • Armando Becker is Victor Branco's right-hand muscle, functioning as a brutal enforcer and leader of the UFE in the Brazilian organ trafficking operation. Leading his men in routine sweeps of neighborhoods in which innocents and criminals alike are executed on the spot or detained, Becker uses these raids to cover up his mass kidnapping of civilians whom he sells off to be harvested of their organs, making himself and Victor a sizable profit off the lives of countless deaths. So corrupt that it's revealed he was the one who sold insider info to pirates that lead to a yacht massacre, Becker just laughs in the face of Max Payne when confronted with his atrocities, showing no loyalty for Victor or concern for the hundreds of lives his atrocities have cost, only smug cheerfulness at the power and wealth his crimes have brought him.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Mona Sax was this in the first game. Despite only showing up in a few graphic novel scenes and having no presence in actual gameplay, she quickly became one of the most popular characters, to the extent that she was Promoted to Playable and given a larger story role (and more attractive model) in the second game.
  • Friendly Fandoms: With 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. This peaked when a mod was made for Max Payne 3 where Max's model can be replaced with a likeness of Keanu Reeves and you can roleplay as John Wick playing through 3's story.
  • Game-Breaker:
    • Molotov Cocktail + door opening / tight corridor / corner + bad AI = This.
    • The below-mentioned "Corner shooting glitch".
    • The second game's spinning Bullet Time reloads, combined with how easy it is to replenish bullet time, virtually removes any penalty for needing to reload in battle.
    • The third game's multiplayer had several. The Mini-30 rifle was a menace with its power and accuracy before it was patched to sane levels, but a number of others were never properly addressed; The "Big Dog" burst allows players to regain their health without needing painkillers and is charged by killing other players, and the Dual 1911 pistols as, properly customized, they have no weaknesses while having superior range and rate of fire to other pistols.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • In the first game, in the 4th level a couple of Mooks can be heard discussing horror movies, with one Mook wondering why vampire movies are always set in California, stating that if he were a vampire, he'd live in the North Pole where nights can last multiple weeks. The graphic novel 30 Days of Night came out a year after Max Payne with that exact same premise.
    • At one point in the second game, Max is assisted by an old, bald and bearded bum who used to be a cop. In the third game, Max is himself a fat, bald and bearded ex-cop.
    • When describing Bullet Time to a game reviewer, the developers likened to an elite athlete for whom the games seems to slow down around them. The reviewer described this as "Kobe Bryant with a Colt Commando." Many, many years later, Kobe Bryant appeared in advertising for Call of Duty: Black Ops, toting a Colt Commando.
    • Max Payne ends up killing the son of New Jersey mob boss on impulse which sets into motion the events of Max Payne 3. Come 2014, Keanu Reeves experiences a Career Resurrection when he stars in John Wick where he plays a character who goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to very deliberately kill the son of a New Jersey mob boss after he steals his car and kills his dog.
    • In his diary, Jack Lupino calls himself "Mr. Beast".
  • Iron Woobie: You'll notice that Max is pretty Stoic for someone who's going through a living hell.
  • It's Short, So It Sucks!: A common gripe of the otherwise-engrossing games is that you may reach the end wishing there was more story content. Max Payne 2 has this the worst with the game's plot moving at a breakneck pace and it being very possible for a devoted player to finish the game in one sitting, especially if they Play the Game, Skip the Story. The games try to get around this by having unlockable Harder Than Hard difficulty levels that give rewards for completion.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Winterson is a Dirty Cop and a hypocrite, but at the same time she loves Vlad and does everything to protect him. This is very, very similar to how Max protects and assists Mona, who is a criminal too. In the end, she was simply manipulated by Vlad, just like Max was - and only because she loved her son. While she comes across as unlikeable when we see during the events of the story, behind the scenes she was essentially a good person with a tragic past who then started making some poorly judged mistakes, much like Max himself.
  • Magnificent Bitch: Mona Sax, the self-described "Evil Twin" of mafia bride Lisa Punchinello, is an intelligent hitwoman who forms a swift bond to Max Payne after drugging him to keep him from rampaging. Returning in the conflict between Alfred Woden and Vladimir Lem, Lisa has been working for Woden to "clean house," eliminating those on Vlad's side and almost claiming his life. Manipulating a Mob War in her favor to stymie Vlad, Mona uses Max to do her work for her, with only her growing love for him preventing her from killing him in the end.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • "Don't answer that, a rhetorical question." explanation 
    • "Ladies and gentlemen, it's the pain in the butt!" explanation 
    • Sam Lake's spoiler  constipated grimace in the original game. Also, his grimace is also referenced in Alan Wake as an Easter Egg while watching "The Harry Garret Show" at the 2:39 mark.
    • "IT'S PAYNE! WHACK HIM!"
    • The game received a Portuguese dub in Brazil. To put it simply, the voice acting is not one of the best, but one quote that was popularized by a Brazilian youtuber's playthrough of the game was the henchmen's exaggerated, nasal way of yelling "É O MAX!" explanation 
    • "I was in x. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of." explanation 
  • Misaimed Fandom: With the Bullet Time 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 Cowboy Cop 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 Empty Shell at the start.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Nicole Horne, a.k.a. "Ms. Valkyr," is catapulted straight over this line when it's revealed she was the one behind the murder of Max's family at the very start of the game.
    • Victor Branco and the UFE from the third game cross this when it's discovered that the people they kidnap from the favelas are being used in illegal organ trafficking.
  • Narm:
    • Max's constipated expression in the first game (provided by Sam Lake himself). Also, in the first game, the mooks' screaming (AWWWW! OWAAHH! HUWOOOOOH!)
    • In the first game, the sound bytes can get mixed up, causing the professional killers such as Mercenaries and Killer Suits to report the same narmy groans when killed by a grenade weapon.
  • Narm Charm:
    • Max's famous constipated expression in the first game, mentioned directly above, that a lot of fans have love for. The strange juxtaposition between Sam Lake's cheesy facial expressions, James McCaffrey's world-weary, whiskey-voiced vocal acting, and the game's very self-conscious send-up of Private Eye Monologues from Film Noir (as it frequently flirts with, but never quite crosses the line into outright Self-Parody), somehow just all work together and even manage to elevate the material to a higher level.
    • All the characters in the comic panels cutscenes of the first game are prone to have unintentionally funny and/or weird facial expressions, considering that they are just members of the game team improvising, and it's still weirdly entertaining. The second game averted this by hiring professional models to pose for the panels.
  • Nintendo Hard: In every game to date; there is no Regenerating Health, painkillers are quite scarce, the gunplay is very fast-paced, and Max is very much a Glass Cannon who can be taken out if he takes only a handful of unlucky hits. Even since the first game, a small bite in your luck can result in Max taking a large amount of damage that could become troublesome for you down the road, whether via wasted painkillers or otherwise. The hardest difficulties have anti-Save Scumming features. The third game has no quicksaves, and the checkpoints tend to be spread apart. The third game also has has New York Minute Hardcore. Normal New York Minute rule (one minute time limit that's extendable with kills), but on the hardest difficulty and death sends you back to the Chapter 1 intro. It's not as tough as it sounds, but enemy memorization, Bullet Time abuse and spare painkillers are key to even contemplate winning.
  • Once Original, Now Common: Every single game that comes out with Bullet Time 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.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • In Max Payne 2, Max is attacked by the Cleaners in his apartment. As he runs around the building, players are treated to an old lady blasting a Cleaner out of her apartment with a shotgun. She then declares "nobody's dragging me out of my home" and offers Max a spare shotgun she keeps around. Never Mess with Granny indeed.
    • Also from 2, the guy in the police station being interviewed. The cops found him strung out on Valkyr burying the body parts of his wife and the pizza delivery boy in his garden, they had been shot in his bed, the blood-covered gun and chainsaw they found in the bathroom have his fingerprints on them, and he claims he was framed by his wife and the pizza delivery boy. Listening to the story is completely optional, but it's so hilariously absurd it's impossible to forget you heard it.
    • Brewer from Max Payne 3. An awesome Robin Williams style neighbor of Max's with a hobo beard, military jacket covered in badges, a beanie, boxers, a semi-automatic shotgun, and a lot of wires sticking out of his coat. He arrives by shooting a thug ambushing Max in the face, then gives a short speech on the cleansing properties of fire and suicide bombs a squad of mobsters running down the hall. He makes a hell of an impression for a character with less than a minute of time spent on screen.
  • Padding: In the first game, the fourth level of Part II, "Put Out My Flames With Gasoline." After getting guns from Vlad, Max calls Punchinello to set up a meeting at a restaurant, knowing he can't hit the man's mansion. Once there Max finds it rigged to blow, and runs through the flames to the back of the restaurant. After shooting a total of about ten mobsters (a very small number for any level), Max escapes to the street, meets up with Vlad, and Vlad drives him to the mansion. In other words, Max is going to just go for a frontal assault on Punchinello's home, the very thing that he said in the intro to the level he shouldn't try. The level could be cut with absolutely nothing lost in terms of story or gameplay; Max gets his guns and Vlad drives him to the mansion.
  • Player Punch:
    • Mona Sax's death...twice!.
    • The original game's opening level where Max can't save his family.
    • Fabiana, after spending hours of game time (and days of Max's time) on her trail getting just this close to saving her, Max is forced to end up watching her get casually shot in the face and die.
    • Also the death of Annie Finn in the second game just before Max can save her is a small one and the deaths of Rodrigo Branco and Marcelo in the third game. Rodrigo in particular was a good guy, and Max really beats himself up for failing to save him.
  • Scrappy Weapon:
    • Weapons with laser sight attachments from 3. Grabbing a weapon with one removes your crosshair and replaces it with a laser sight that bounces around as you move and fire. This makes aiming significantly more difficult, if not impossible. Luckily, you can turn it off if you so please.
    • The lead pipe and the baseball bat from the first game are only meant as Emergency Weapons and it shows. In a game where you can be killed in one or two hits up close if unlucky and has no stealth mechanics, charging into melee range while being shot at is outright suicidal. Fortunately, there are very few situations where you don't have enough weapons or ammo to rely on them. They got replaced by the equally useless Pistol-Whipping in the sequel, but Max is at least a bit more durable this time around and it's a Quick Melee function as opposed to a separate weapon.
  • Sequel Difficulty Drop: 2 has its moments that may cause grief, but as a whole, the game has a more relaxed difficulty. Your Bullet Time ability is stronger than ever, and practically eliminates the penalty for reloading; Bullet Time is so powerful in fact, that Max and Mona could qualify for invitation to a superhero justice team.
  • Spiritual Licensee:
    • The Max Payne games are some of the best John Woo games ever made before Stranglehold. It's to the point where it's lampshaded in the first game, the password for one early part in John Woo, and Max said soon after that he'd need to make like Chow Yun-fat.
    • Fans have been known to joke that 3 is a surprisingly good Kane & Lynch sequel. In a more serious note, the game almost seems to be taking some pages out of Man on Fire's book. Just look at the first trailer of the game when Max describes his situation and you will notice the similarities instantaneously.
    • And if you disregard the decent game it got several years ago (or the one by Deep Silver that came after), the series as a whole could pass for a pretty solid The Punisher video game due to the almost identical traits Max shares with Frank, its edgy noir tone, and brutal violence (especially in the third game).
    • With the Kung Fu mod installed, the first game is the best Matrix game ever made.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Max's body and especially face received a Hollywood makeover for the second game. YMMV on whether this was a good thing. This got worse for the third game, but once Rockstar showed off what Max looks like in the New York levels plus announcing that he would look like his VA James McCaffrey, the fanbase calmed down and was fine with his change in looks.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: B.B. is the only person besides Alex who knows about Max being undercover, and the one who killed Alex, resulting in Max becoming a fugitive. Despite that, he only appears in one chapter, apart from a brief appearance in a graphic novel scene at the start of the first chapter and when he kills Alex, and it's a shame that a fairly important character is so underutilized.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome:
    • Max Payne 2. Remedy had been given a higher budget and access to Rockstar's production resources thanks to the success of the first game, and it shows. The entire engine was given a graphical overhaul, with characters given full facial expressions and more fluid animation while the engine was also upgraded with shaders and greatly improved particle effects. The game managed to do all this a full year before the release of Half-Life 2.
    • Max Payne 3 features wide-open spaces unlike anything before in the series and immersive lighting and texture effects that really set a wide variety of moods. One of the highlights is a level set entirely inside a soccer stadium with a sense that you're really traveling across the huge super structure and getting a major tour of the facility as you engage in heated gun battles.
  • Wangst: Most of Max's inner monologues delve into this in 3. On the one hand, over the years, he's developed a completely justified level of Survivor Guilt. He may be able to singlehandedly kill hundreds of mooks (which, as a former law enforcer, isn't something he'd be proud of to begin with), but not before they have killed everyone he's either cared about or tasked to protect. On the other, he just won't shut up about it, taking every opportunity to mention how much he sucks. In the first two games, he avoided this by snarking and occasionally making light of his situation, but here, his snarks have an overly-caustic undercurrent that only makes it worse. This is actually lampshaded as far as the second game, during Vlad's Villainous Breakdown.
    Vlad: What the fuck is wrong with you, Max? Why don't you just die? You hate life, you're miserable all the time, afraid to enjoy yourself even a little! Face it, you might as well be dead already. Do yourself a favor, give up!

The film:

  • Complete Monster: B.B. Hensley is chief of security of the Aesir Corporation and proves himself to be worse than his game counterpart. Near the end of the movie, it was revealed that he was responsible on selling a drug known as Valkyr across New York; Valkyr causes horrible side effects and result in the consumer Driven to Madness. It was also revealed that he killed Max Payne's wife and his infant child by sending 3 junkies to his house, sadistically enjoying murdering them. B.B. is also responsible for the atrocities of Jack Lupino, the former test subject of Valkyr. After Max discovers his secrets, B.B. then tries to drown Max in the river under the pretense that the latter died by a drug-induced suicide in the river.
  • Moral Event Horizon: The Motive Rant by the Big Bad as to why he killed Max's wife and child. He's so... proud.
  • Questionable Casting:
    • Many felt this way about Mark Wahlberg 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 James McCaffrey'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 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 Ludacris.
    • Mila Kunis as Mona Sax. She really can't pull off the Professional Killer Femme Fatale. Arguably, Olga Kurylenko, who plays her sister, would have been a better choice.
  • So Okay, It's Average: It's hardly the worst game adaptation out there, but it is perhaps among the most pointless. The major appeal of the game was getting to recreate popular Heroic Bloodshed and Hollywood action movie tropes like Bullet Time and Leap and Fire in a highly immersive medium, so putting these well-known film tropes into another action movie just made it... another action movie.
  • Took the Bad Film Seriously: Donal Logue as Alex Balder is clearly throwing much more effort into the film and the role than either deserve.
  • The Un-Twist: The reveal of B.B. being the bad guy is hardly a surprise to anyone who has played the games, but the film having the death of Max's family only be revealed near the end baffled both fans of the game and movie goers alike, with several critics blasting it as a poor attempt to cover a cliched motivation. Even ignoring this, the film outright deliberately announces the twist not even 15 minutes beforehand! Hensley's secretary calls him on the phone as Max is interrogating someone, namedrops him, and afterwards Hensley proceeds to send in hordes of corrupt cops after Max - yet the film still attempts to play up him revealing himself as the Big Bad to Max as if it were not revealed beforehand. Even if this were intended to be an Internal Reveal, it is presented as if the viewer were not aware of the twist either.
  • Video Game Movies Suck: The film received mostly poor reviews, racking up an 18% at Rotten Tomatoes.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The V hallucination sequences are absolutely gorgeous both in artistic direction and visual execution.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: The Nordic symbolism is all over the place, unlike the game's mostly accurate use of it.


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