REVIEW: Wanted
WANTED
Starring: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, and Morgan Freeman
Release: June 27, 2008
Wanted is the story of the everyday corporate slave, who’s life is changed by his adoption into a deadly fraternity of assassins, responsible for balance and order in the world. It is packed with all the summer blockbuster essentials required for box office success. Crazy special effects? Check. Super sexy, half-nude, crazy baby adopting co-star? Check. Extreme amount of violence? Check. Overblown action set pieces? Check. Well wait, wait, wait. A movie that has all of that stuff has to be awesome right? Well sort of.
Aside from all the car explosions, bullet time scenes, and Angelina Jolie ass, there is an actual story behind Wanted. Wesley Gibson, played by James McAvoy, is your regular corporate American desk jockey. He has a boss that makes his ears bleed and girlfriend who is sleeping with his best friend and co-worker. His character is almost exactly the same as the protagonist from Fight Club played by Ed Norton. He follows along the my life is pointless plotline until one day he is rescued from redundancy by Fox (Angelina Jolie), who adopts him into the Fraternity of assassins, and trains him to become one seriously bad ass dude. I thought the Fight Club sub-plot was actually the most entertaining part of the movie.
Once Wesley is trained to become an assassin, now comes the fun part. Wanted hits the gas and never lets up, swerving through shootouts and new assassination attempts. Every action scene is well crafted and avoids the problem of being so choppy that you can’t tell who is shooting who. This is pulled off by showing every bullet enter and exit victims, or targets, in gory slow-mo cgi. The violence is definitely in tact with a hard ‘R’ rating and is one of the reasons the movie is so entertaining. That and the fact that the tempo never stops and the action keeps building until the climax which contain a symphony of gunplay.
The main complaint I have with this movie is that the writers never even considered establishing rules to the universe in which we see the characters on screen. I mean if you are going show me a guy literally lunging out of a skyscraper shooting curving bullets perfectly into his targets heads or a car barrel rolling through midair just to get a shot through the neighboring car’s sun roof, you better set some ground rules. This is why the Matrix made its ridiculous action scenes work. The first half of the movie was entirely exposition, delving into exactly why these people could jump across buildings and dodge bullets. Wanted never establishes what is possible in its fantasy world nor gives an explanation why.
Wanted is definitely better then you average summer action flick. If you can put aside your reasonable thought process and questions as to why things on the screen are happening, you will be treated to a relentlessly violent good time.
