Featured Review: WANTED

Wanted



Starring- James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Thomas Kretschmann, Common, Terence Stamp



Directed by Timur Bekmambetov



Grade: B




"What the [expletive deleted] have you done lately?"

Usually films that have no regards for the laws of physics are generally bad. Then, there are movies like Wanted that take no prisoners in its attempt to go balls-out ballistic on your common sense and defy even the most stuck-up film scholars to admit that real life movies don't always have to be true-to-life. Wanted literally rewrites the mindless action film into an enjoyable, guilty pleasure.

We meet Wesley Gibson (Atonement's James McAvoy, decidedly less sexy and brooding here) in the middle of a mental breakdown. His office job sucks, his girlfriend and best friend are having not-so-secret sex behind his back, and he takes medication to control his panic attacks. Overall, he feels his life is meaningless. That is, until the day Fox (Angelina Jolie, decidedly less pregnant here), an ultra-attractive super assassin comes and saves him from another killer. Gibson gets recruited into Fox's group, The Fraternity, led by Sloan (Morgan Freeman, decidedly less God-like here), based entirely on the fact that he must have his father's genes of a killer.

What ensues is two hours of violence and chase scenes. Some of the action is so over the top that it begins to get tiresome. We've broken down the thought process of making sense of the outlandish stuff going down on screen, so it ends up becoming acceptable. They could pack sixteen elephants into a gun chamber and use them to kill the Pope from the planet Mars at that point and it'd somehow make perfect sense in Wanted.

Whereas the Clive Owen/Paul Giamatti vehicle Shoot 'Em Up, last year's attempt at tongue-in-cheek action/dark comedy bonanza, largely failed because it worked to provide realism as much as its asinine plot and violence sequencing, Wanted makes no such mistakes. Its plot is genially stupid, but there are enough twists and turns, some predictable, some should have been predictable, to keep the action scenes chugging along.

Director Bekmambetov knows a story about curving bullets, a prophetic loom weaver, and a sinister Morgan Freeman isn't supposed to be real. He instead provides gunplay, and lots of it. I'm not a fan of directors who use quick cuts and warbling camera angles (example being Tony Scott) but to highlight Wesley's inner turmoil, Bekmambetov does a fine job using it, but to a minimum. His black comedy vision of Wesley's stark contrast between sterile office life and excessive violence recalls Mary Harron's American Psycho.

McAvoy is the standout actor here. After getting his chops in prestigious award-seeking films such as The Last King Of Scotland and Atonement, and being best known to wider audiences in the first The Chronicles Of Narnia, McAvoy does a seamless transition from meek, panic-ridden everyman to world-weary badass. With his crooked smile and sweaty, pasty face, he is unafraid to look foolish and ugly.

Jolie, meanwhile, is more engaging than she has been in the recent past, but is strictly there for sex appeal. In the end the two stars never engage in any sexual activity, which I suppose is a refreshing rarity in a film like this, but her character is pretty well undeveloped, aside from a small flashback to her childhood. She could also stand to gain a few pounds. I don't know any sexy assassins, but I would assume they don't look so gaunt, with such bony arms. Her muscle mass doesn't even look like she could carry one of those guns, let alone fly in all directions and murder somebody with it.

As a critic, its easy to take Wanted down a few pegs. It was not made for us to cherish as a smart piece of cinematic history. Instead it is an action film that surprisingly exceeds the expectations many fans and non-fans assume of it, and for that Wanted gets praise. It's different in minor aspects, gloriously undaunted by its limitations, and in all, a fun ride.