*SPOILER ALERT*
Ok, so the US government contracts a huge pharmaceuticals company to make a super soldier serum. Fine.
But do you really expect me to believe that the best they can do is a blue drink that's highly addictive, works on only 1% of the population, lasts for an hour or so and has a side effect of crippling terror? Excuse me? Seriously, soldiers would be better off on PCP and steroids.
But rather than improve on the design they put it into mass production... huh?
Now this corporation that I can only assume is worth millions if not billions of dollars has a bunch of this next-to-useless serum, so what do they do? Incinerate it? Sell it to Russia?
No. Their best idea is to profit from the debacle by selling the serum on the street as a "recreational" drug... What?! Are they really so strapped for cash? I doubt it.
And it seems like quite a stretch that people would actually line up to ingest the stuff for fun, the only effects I could see were a brief rush that makes you scream followed by terrifying hallucinations and "the shakes."

The narrative style did not work for me. I agree the family background should have been explained at the beginning of the film, then the rest could have stayed focused on Max Payne and his quest for justice. Instead the film constantly switched its focus to unimportant one-dimensional characters who did next-to-nothing for the plot.

There were some nice elements. The slow motion effects were great, and there was some nice lighting and environmental effects. The sets were cool and reminded me of the game. The action/shootout sequences themselves were all right, but nowhere near as good as the Hong Kong classics like "Hard Boiled."