Capsule reviews of films playing the week of Oct. 29 

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MAX PAYNE Imagine The Constant Gardener after a frontal lobotomy, and that's basically Max Payne in a nutshell. The latest bomb based on a popular video game, this stars Mark Wahlberg as a New York cop who, years after the fact, is still solely obsessed with solving the murders of his wife and baby. It sounds like standard Death Wish fare; the picture even opens with Max luring three drug addicts into a subway restroom, then proceeding to inflict Payne – excuse me, pain – on them. But as in The Constant Gardener, a major pharmaceutical outfit figures into the proceedings, though it's safe to say that Ralph Fiennes never had to contend with winged demons flying all over the cityscape. That's not the case with Wahlberg, whose character also has to deal with invincible super-soldiers, a leggy druggie (Olga Kurylenko) and a career assassin (a miscast Mila Kunis) who's about as menacing as a Scooby-Doo plush doll. Rather than focusing on making a kick-ass action flick (presumably what fans of the video game would crave), director John Moore and novice scripter Beau Thorne dress up their simplistic revenge yarn with various twists and turns – all of which are absurdly easy to predict (if the revelation of the piece's final villain surprises you, you really need to add more mysteries to your moviegoing diet). Yet even when they do get around to the shootouts and fisticuffs, they prove to be flagrantly opportunistic, rehashing both The Matrix and the John Woo oeuvre to diminishing returns. Incidentally, stay through the final credits to see the coda that promises a sequel. My bet is that it will star Donnie Wahlberg instead of Mark and debut directly on DVD. *

NICK & NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST Nick and Nora (no "h") were the sophisticated sleuths played by William Powell and Myrna Loy in the popular The Thin Man movies back in the 1930s and '40s, and this married team never encountered a criminal they couldn't bring to justice. By contrast, the Nick and Norah in this tone-deaf feature are vanquished by the piece's villains, who are revealed to be director Peter Sollet and scripter Lorene Scafaria (adapting the book by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan). In short, this is one Thin Movie. Michael Cera, who needs to play a Norman Bates-like character to shake things up, stars as Nick, a high school kid crushed by being dumped by Tris (Alexis Dziena), the sort of vapid princess who in real life wouldn't even give someone like Nick the time of day, let alone six months of quality dating time. Through plot contrivances too laborious to outline here, Nick and Tris' pal Norah (Kat Dennings) end up spending an entire after-hours session combing New York for both Norah's drunken friend Caroline (Ari Graynor) and a secret jam session by the city's latest "It" band. Dennings displays a slightly off-kilter personality that marks her as someone to keep watching (she's also appeared in Charlie Bartlett and The House Bunny), and Cera's teddy-bear cynicism – his wisecracking character is sweet even when trying to be caustic – provides extra zip to his better lines. But for a film set amidst the hustle and bustle of late-night NYC, this is one lethargic picture, with Sollet's inert direction bringing nothing to the party. For an infinitely better movie about hipsters looking for love, wait for In Search of a Midnight Kiss to hit DVD. **

NIGHTS IN RODANTHE Diane Lane and the Tuscan countryside prove to be a more dynamic duo than Diane Lane and the Outer Banks, an assertion that immediately becomes clear when placing Under the Tuscan Sun and Nights in Rodanthe side by side. The former made the most of its setting and its star, resulting in a winning romantic comedy whose love-struck spirit rubbed off on audience members eager to lap up its sense of joie de vivre. The coastal-Carolina-shot Rodanthe, on the other hand, starts off well as Tuscan Sun's more serious-minded cousin, but it eventually sinks under the weight of the shameless plot devices thrust upon it by author Nicholas Sparks and adapters Ann Peacock and John Romano. Lane, teaming with Richard Gere for the third time (following 1984's The Cotton Club and 2002's Unfaithful), plays Adrienne Willis, who agrees to look after her best friend's (Viola Davis) beachfront inn at the same time that her philandering husband (Christopher Meloni) is begging her to let him come back. Gere co-stars as Paul Flanner, a doctor brooding over a minor surgery procedure that went tragically wrong. As the only two people stuck at the inn, Adrienne and Paul open up to each other and gradually fall in love. For a while, Nights in Rodanthe works as a mature and even touching drama, but then the melodramatic devices take over with the force of a hurricane. And speaking of hurricane, the second-act emergence of this force of nature is but one of the hoary aspects that sink the production, along with a sour twist that is as expected as it is defeatist. **