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The trailer for the upcoming film Max Payne has hit the web… and for a movie based on a videogame it’s actually looking pretty damn cool.  Mark Wahlberg stars as a NYC detective mourning the murder of his family at the hands of very bad men.  Aside from that tidbit it’s unclear from the trailer what the main plot line of the movie will be.  Check out the new trailer below.

C’mon, admit it… it doesn’t look anywhere near as bad as you expected.  Videogames aren’t known to be reliable source material for quality movies, but director John Moore seems to have done better than expected in capturing Max Payne’s dark, gritty, noirish tone.  Having played both videogames I’m not exactly clear as to what those angels of death are doing… unless they’re part of some drug-induced dream sequence… but the effects are sweet regardless.

The Max Payne videogames followed Max’s descent into a metaphorical and drug addled hell a few years after the slaughter of his wife and child.  While working undercover for the DEA he discovers a conspiracy that reaches to the upper echelons of society, as any worthwhile conspiracy is prone to do, and finds a connection to his family’s murder as well.  Several hundred bodies later, Max stands triumphant (and is promptly arrested for the bloody trail of corpses he left behind.)  The second game follows a similar theme… loss, guilt, conspiracy… all punctuated by slow-mo Woo-style action and gunplay.  Both games used graphic novel panels to advance the story, and featured spectacularly cheesy and perfect dialogue like “You’d find that Lady Luck was really a hooker. And you were fresh out of cash” and ”I would have laughed, if I could have remembered how.”

Moore, Wahlberg, and the suddenly hot Mila Kunis are all scheduled to be at Comic-Con 2008 later this month with a preview of the film.  This is Moore’s fourth feature film after the underrated Behind Enemy Lines, the mediocre Flight of the Phoenix, and the unnecessary The Omen remake.  (Per IMDB, his next movie, Virulents, is about lost soldiers in Afghanistan who stumble upon a nest of vampire zombies!)  Max Payne opens in October.