To See or Not to See?

I had wanted to go see Max Payne today but now I'm just not so sure. Back to my complaint of Babylon A.D. it just seems too often that movies are being manhandled in order to pack in more patrons of the 13-year-old male variety. I knew in seeing previews for Max Payne just over a month ago that this would be the case here as well. Why? Because about a month before the release date, the preview still said "This film is not yet rated" I take this phrase to mean, "We are currently making changes to please the ratings board and bring it down from R to PG-13."

I read a NY Times review of the movie and finished with a sense that the reviewer in question was basically saying to readers: This is a video game movie, what did you expect?

It's not that I expect video game based movies to be award-winning masterpieces. Not at all in fact. I just expect them to have storyline, decent effects, and to show me where the money that went into making the film was spent. So often it seems that they crank out these multi-million dollar productions with great effects and lots of visual stimuli (like a video game) but that they lose sight of the fact that they're making a full-length movie. 

There have been some really great comic book and video game movies out: Resident Evil is probably the best example. This was a great zombie flick. I didn't find it overly cheesy nor did I feel that it suffered for being a movie based on a video game. Overall, I just thought it was a really fun horror movie. On the flipside, the sequel sucked! Mainly it was because of the huge monster in the end. I could handle most of the rest. 

So, will Max Payne be more of a Resident Evil or will it be Ultra Violet all over again? I guess I'll just have to go see it and find out. I'll probably be picking a matinee, though, so it won't hurt as much if the movie is terrible.