Director: John Moore, 15, 100min

Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges

On general release

This formulaic, dumb action film (based on a computer game) offers slo-mo gunfights, CGI evil angels, a convoluted conspiracy plot, and a snowy New York-as-Gotham City setting. There are also hordes of disposable baddies, with Wahlberg discharging as many sexy guns as possible while playing soul-deadening grief as if it were constipation.

The supercop Max Payne, traumatised by the murder of his gorgeous wife and baby, spends his off-duty hours tracking down the culprit whom everyone watching guessed was dodgy in his first scene. It’s more muscular than last year’s very similar Hitman, which also featured the limited gorgeousness of Olga Kurylenko, who – with lookalike roles in Le Serpent and Quantum of Solace– is in danger of being typecast as battered Russian call girls.

Moore, a high-finish director who specialises in remakes (The Omen, Flight of the Phoenix), doesn’t bring a single new idea to the table, but originality wouldn’t really be appropriate in adapting something that prides itself on being derivative. It’s not clever, but it is highly crafted. It doesn’t need to exist, but it does what it does quite well.

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