Wanted Movie Review
By Jason Revill
As a neurotics Account Manager Wesley, (James McAvoy) pretty much lives the same beat down life every day. Suffering from anxiety attacks, he never once stands up to the nagging girlfriend, the best fried with whom she’s cheating or his hateful office supervisor. That is until he is approached by Fox (Angelina Jolie) while at the pharmacy. She explains that his father was part of a secret order of assassins called The Fraternity and not only was he the best but he was recently murdered by a rouge member. No sooner than the words leave her mouth, they are under attack. Fox takes Wesley to meet The Fraternity’s leader, Sloan (Morgan Freeman) who explains that the order’s purpose is to keep balance in the world by murdering people whose names are given to Sloan in the form of binary code in the thread of the material produced from the Loom of Fate. He then sets Wesley upon a brutal training regiment to teach him to fight, shoot and toughen him up in order to track down and avenge his father’s murder.
Usually, I like James McAvoy, but I’m not buying him as an action star or as an office schlub. The editing used to make it look like he’s actually doing the things he’s supposed to be doing here is obvious and the over enunciated voice-over work, which serves no purpose other than to set up the film’s final line and rip off as much of Fight Club as humanly possible is annoying. By the way, ending your movie by essentially calling he audience a bunch of losers, presupposes that your film appeals to losers. Brilliant. So if you like Wanted, guess what? You’re a loser. Angelina Jolie plays the hot chick, who is of course named Fox. Yeah, that’s all you got there, except some character motivation that really doesn’t make sense. Jolie also isn’t convincing as a bad ass seeing as how at any moment it looks as though she could be blown over by a stiff breeze. By the way, how does she rationalizing being a UN Goodwill Ambassador and being in this film? Oh, that’s right, the paycheck. Morgan Freeman is the mysterious benefactor, who is essentially in the film because of the short hand he provides as a wise mentor and also so he can drop an f-bomb that is meant to be hilarious, but isn’t. That’s mostly because it’s out of left field and pretty obviously only done for the effect of it. If you thought Sam Jackson in Snakes on a Plane was funny you might like it, but really it wasn’t funny either. The rest of the cast is kind of pointless. You have a villain who is undefined for obvious reasons, a gun guy, a knife guy, a British guy, and a crazy Russian who likes rats. And that’s pretty much all there is to know.
Look, the plot of this movie is downright stupid. Almost to the point of being funny, actually let me take that back, I did laugh out loud (much to the confusion of the greasy loner to my right), so I guess it is funny. It never really defines itself as either taking place in fantasy or reality. It wants to have all the aspects of existing in a world unto itself, but the premise relies on this organization existing in the world in which we live. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the insane car flips or physical abilities of the characters, but there are things that seem silly. For instance, let’s take a look at the Loom of Fate. Aside from the fact that it sounds like a challenge on a Japanese game show, the fact that they just gloss over how insane it is that The Fraternity gets their orders from it is ridiculous. We get an unbelievably obvious plot twist at the end that’s supposed to make you look at the whole film in a new light, but Wanted isn’t nearly clever enough to pull it off.
The other thing I don’t get is why Wesley gets involved in hunting his father’s killer down in the first place. He never knew the man nor did he care anything about him. Basically, he decides to join up because his office supervisor is a hateful, nagging shrew? I’m not saying this story needs to be rock solid, but you got to give me more than this and a training montage to develop Wesley’s character. I thought we had all become aware the use of one of these types of montages was a cheap excuse for story. Hell, South Park has almost run making fun of them into the ground.
I’m not going to sit here and say that there isn’t anything redeemable about this film, but there isn’t much. In general, it’s good looking and some of the action sequences, particularly ones involving cars are fairly entertaining, but in a lot of instances the action is cheated by switching to shaky close ups and the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves style bullet shots aren’t as cool as they think they are. Also with so much of this film being CGI, it’s sort of hard to give the images any real intensity, when they’re obviously faked. Ultimately, Wanted just comes off like a mash up of The Matrix and Fight Club, which if you’ve seen director Timur Bekmambetov’s other work, Night Watch and Day Watch, you shouldn’t be surprised. Essentially, those films are just The Matrix with supernatural rather sci-fi elements. There’s also a sense that it’s more important to make things look cool rather than tell a story.
When I went to see Wanted, there was a ten year old there with his grandfather and I couldn’t help but wonder if halfway through if Grandpa had wished he’d chosen a different bonding experience. With all the blood splatter and brain matter flying around, this is a hard R film. It’s essentially like watching a video game and at times I felt like I was sitting through Grand Theft Auto: The Movie, which I have no doubt is on purpose and is definitely meant to appeal to a certain segment of the populace. Generally speaking, if you’re a teenage boy or are really cocky about how good you are at Halo, then this is probably something you’ll like. If you’re not, don’t bother. A good rule of thumb for telling how dumb a movie is going to be is by paying attention to how many dirty guys tore themselves away from World of Warcraft long enough to go to the movies, but couldn’t muster the energy to waddle any farther than he handicapped seats. In my screening, they were half the audience.
The Grade
- Story: D
- Acting: C
- Visuals: C
- Originality: D
- Enjoyability: D
- Overall: D
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