Max Payne is not the first digital vigilante to be modelled in flesh and blood by a Hollywood star. But he is the most lucrative by box-office miles. Haunting too. John Moore’s spooky thriller Max Payne transforms the gloomy New York detective into the most credible flesh-and-blood hero to graduate from a video game.

It has been a long, painful birth. Max was invented by a Finnish gaming company in 2001 and he has never quite got over the shock. Mark Wahlberg’s titular hero hasn’t cracked a smile in seven years. The surprise is that he makes the lonely cop seem half human with half a dozen words and a staggering amount of violence.

This is no mean feat. In Moore’s movies humanity is measured by the amount of misery inflicted on the hero, and Wahlberg’s detective is in a league of his own. “What’s wrong with him?” barks the seemingly obligatory hip-hop star, Lieutenant Chris “Ludacris” Bridges from Internal Affairs. “Don’t ask,” comes the reply.

Wahlberg’s lean cop has spent numb years in the basement of the local police station trying to fathom the brutal murders of his wife and child. The novel shock is how well the drama unravels, despite the sensation that you are in the middle of a game of Cluedo. You wouldn’t dare describe Moore’s film as high art. But he manages to twist the supernatural trappings of the original video-game story into a rollicking blast of film noir. The plot rattles around the strangely empty streets of New York like an out-of-control tram.

You hang on for dear life as Wahlberg’s frowning avenger, Max Payne (a nonsensical pun on the words “maximum pain”), batters his way through the extras in greasy alleyways, ghastly night-clubs and rotten tenements. It’s always midnight and lashing rain. Or a snow storm smothers the screen with flakes as big as moths. There are nice pinches of Dashiell Hammett, John Woo, and the Wachowski brothers. But the real magic of this film is the clever way in which Moore brings simple black shadows to life. A terrified bum runs down a subway tunnel to escape having his head removed by Wahlberg, only to be cornered by the outlines of half-glimpsed demons. It’s a thrilling conceit.

I’m spilling just three beans: a secret military experiment goes wildly wrong; a seedy army of loony drug addicts are plagued by ancient Norwegian delusions about Valkyries; and there is the regulation corporate cover-up. Yes, it’s utterly barmy. Who in their right mind would chuck a naked Olga Kurylenko out of their bed? Max, who has absolutely no time for sex.

15, 99 minutes

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