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Oh, come on. With Mark Wahlberg playing the titular quietly steaming renegade cop chasing after the men who murdered his wife and child and Mila Kunis as a Russian assassin who-sorry, stifling a snicker-is hunting the people responsible for murdering her sister, surely director John Moore can connect the action genre dots for this based-on-a-video game adaptation. Slow-mo weapon firing? Check. Obligatory foreign hottie? Check, in Kunis' Mona Sax's sister Natasha (Olga Kurylenko). Either Wahlberg or Kunis caught off guard and having to fight back a wave of baddies while expertly wielding an automatic weapon in their underwear? No-say what? Yes, like so much of this stilted actioner, Moore tries to aim for serious when he should be merely trying to entertain, and by the time Payne and Mona have uncovered a pharmaceutical giant's military background and ties to the underground drug culture, there's way too much plot to get in the way of the story. As is, Ludacris is the best thing here. No, really.

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