Wanted (2008)

As the impresario behind gravity-defying Russian blockbuster Night Watch, it's inevitable that Hollywood would come calling for Timur Bekmambetov. With a studio budget and an international cast, including two Oscar winners, Timur cooks up a Hong Kong-styled actioner bursting with fast cars and big guns. Our unlikely hero is mild-mannered Chicago accountant Wesley Gibson (Atonement's James McAvoy), whose father died when he was a tot. Wesley never learned to stand up for himself, and his girlfriend, boss, and best buddy all take advantage until the seductive Fox (Angelina Jolie) rescues him from a sharpshooter named Cross (The Pianist’s Thomas Kretschmann). After which, she whisks him away to a mansion on the edge of town to meet the other members of the Fraternity, where leader Sloan (Morgan Freeman) informs Wesley that Cross, a rogue agent, executed his father. Sloan believes Wesley has the goods to take him out, so he undergoes the Fraternity's brutal training regimen (Marc Warren and Common dish up some of the abuse). When he's ready, Sloan sends him out to fulfill his duty, but matters become complicated when Wesley finds out someone isn't telling the truth, leading our former milquetoast to exact an elaborate revenge. For those who've been following McAvoy's career to date, Wanted will surely come as a surprise. In adapting Mark Millar's comic series, Timur offers buckets of blood and a smidgen of depth, but fans of The Matrix and Mr. and Mrs. Smith will want to give this one a look. --Kathleen C. Fennessy Amazon.com

Guns+Girl+Cars+Stunts+Special Effects+Bad plot = DVD rental fun!

The story can be summed up with Hong Kong-styled action bursting with fast cars and big guns and minimal plot.

CON's:
- f-bombs galore! Distractingly too much that I wondered if the writers knew you can have great dialogue without the F-word in every other sentence. Is the new "cool" way to talk? Geez!

- More plot holes than swiss cheese. Really? Does Freeman have to go through a monologue of admitting his plans when the only evidence is a he-said, she-said situation?

- Scenes so predictable I thought I could open a psychic line. For example, the moment we see the nagging girlfriend, you just know there will be a scene where McAvoy flaunts Angelina in front of her though this scene had such less impact than other movies who have done the same thing.

- Stupid reasons to shoot and blow things up.

- McAvoy's "special ability" is not used to the same super-hero extent as its professed to be

- Angelina has very few lines. She's a better actress than that even though as of recent she's been moved down to eye candy only.

- Angelina type casted. Can anyone say Tomb Raider or Mrs. Smith?!?

- There's the dreaded "Luke I am your father" scene. Again. . .bad writing/plot


PRO's:

- Stupid reasons to shoot and blow things up, but not nearly as brain-dead as Bad Boys II.

- Special effect stunts that defy logic and the laws of physics.

- Angelina has very few lines! She is only good as eye candy or adopting 3rd world children it seems these days.

- McAvoy is excellent in his bumbling, fearful accountant mode. The slow-mo scenes show his facial expressions to a "t" that you just have to laugh at the comic relief of his character



OVERALL:
When you want a night to lay back with some popcorn, smoothie (unless beer is your thing) and a movie that makes use of your surround sound but not your brain = rent this on DVD! August 27, 2008

Cool Yet Terrible

I'm sure there are many people around the world who went into this film expecting an intense, and exciting blockbuster. Exciting it was, but it lacked that intensity and depth to really make the film work. I'm actually more disappointed it didn't deliver, simply the cast it had at the helm should have made this film amazing on its own, but even they struggled to make this film great.

Wanted is a story about the definitive nobody named Wesley Gibson (Macavoy). His life is repetitive, tedious and just downright boring. He works in a job he hates for a boss who's the most annoying person in the world. He has a girlfriend who's cheating on him with his apparent best friend and his life just seems to be going nowhere. One day while picking up his prescription of anxiety pills, Gibson is confronted by a sexy vixen we come to know as Fox (Jolie). She tells him that he's the son of one of the greatest assassins and the man that killed his father is now trying to kill Wesley. Wesley learns that his Father belonged to a fraternity of expert assassins lead by Sloan (Freeman) and it's now Wesley's fate to join and kill the man who killed his father. He is then trained by the fraternity to make him good enough to take the man down.

The whole plot in itself is generally that straight forward, it creates an excuse to have a whole lot of blood and bullets, while struggling to instil a sense of depth in our characters. It just doesn't work and although Jolie & Macavoy do work their roles well, it struggles to hold your attention during the apparent heart to heart scenes and you find yourself saying "Get to the action already."

Speaking of the action, that's about the only good thing I can really say about this entire film. The action sequences, although slightly unrealistic manage to keep you interested throughout. The CGI seems flawless, but even the action had a true flaw that really bugged me which I must touch upon. One of the first scenes involving Macavoy and Jolie is when they're being chased by the man who killed Gibson's father. Picture this, Fox & Gibson are in a Dodge Viper and the killer is in a cat food truck. For whatever reason, Jolie struggles to lose the truck even though the Viper has a couple of hundred BHP over the actual truck.

I would recommend this film only to those who like mindless action movies and don't really care about character depth. The characters are about as deep as a toddlers swimming pool and have very unconvincing personalities. I can only say that this film just seemed like a pay cheque for these big name actors. I honestly can't see any other reason as to why they would want to take part in this film. August 25, 2008

Star Wars Episode 4.5

The story is comfortable and entertaining, but not original. And that's okay.

Remember the first commercials for the new Volkswagon Beetle? The ones that followed an office worker around while playing ELO music? In the commercials, it was clear that the poor guy's only hope of breaking out of the hum-drum work-a-day world was ... to buy a Beetle. For the first 20 minutes of Wanted, I kid you not, you get, almost the same commercial, but our hero's only way to break out is to follow Angelina Jolie into a life of assassinations and brutality, the latter inflicted on himself. From that point until almost the very end, the movie plays just like Star Wars Episode IV (that's the first one, right?) The ending is interesting and unexpected. Which is to say the first ending. The second ending seems to have been added for "closure" but I would have been fine leaving the first ending as-is.

All the performances were solid. Angelina Jolie had about 5 lines. Morgan Freeman could add gravitas to a Lucky Charms commerical, and James McAvoy is fine (not inspired or memorable, but suitable in the role.) The effects are comic-book (which makes sense considering the origin of the material) and they sometimes make you go, "Wow!" This includes car chases, roof top action, and the ability to "bend" bullets like David Beckham bends soccer balls.

There is one critical plot point that seems to have been lost in the rewrites concerning the guy in the first scene. After you watch the movie, think back to that guy and what he was doing. I think continuity slipped up there and its a biggie.

Overall, its a fun flick and worth a rent.

August 23, 2008

Kinetic genre piece that's not quite slick or smart enough

Apologetic loser, Wesley Gibson - a knowing cuckold and paralyzed victim of workplace bullying - discovers his true destiny is not actually preparing billing reports for a nasty boss. When he's apparently almost killed waiting in line at the drugstore, only to be saved by a gun-slinging-Dodge-driving Angelina Jolie, he's given some interesting news: his estranged father has just died and his own drug-controlled panic attacks are actually evidence of a rare inherited disorder that predisposes him to be the perfect assassin. He's promptly freed from white-collar servitude and bundled off to a Chicago textile mill where he spends weeks learning the ways of The Force ... wait, no, that's not quite right. It's the Fraternity. But it might as well be the Jedi Order given the number of lines lifted almost verbatim from the original "Star Wars" trilogy and a character arc that's suspiciously Skywalkerish. Wesley's mission? Kill the assassin who turned to the dark side and betrayed and murdered his father... "Wanted" is utterly ludicrous, but thankfully knows it. Its winking self-awareness carries you through the bracing opening and a genuinely engaging setup, but it can only take you so far. Wesley's training is absurd, and when Fraternity supremo Morgan Freeman reveals they take their coded kill-orders from a 1000-year-old feral 'spinning jenny' out back of the textile mill, you realize the wheels really did fall off back when Angelina flipped the Dodge. The beefed-up James McAvoy looks like giving Shia LaBeouf some competition for the everyman action hero roles - you never lose the sense that Wesley is someone like you - and Angelina Jolie is, as always, just ludicrously, impossibly hot. But this movie isn't about performances. It's about the kinetics and spectacle of seeing people shot and things blown up - graphically, repeatedly, and from as many angles as possible. On that score it delivers - the car chase and train sequence were particularly impressive. But sadly - and quite surprisingly for a film adapted from the world of the graphic novel, and created by this crew - "Wanted" doesn't quite have the visual style to catapult it from ludicrous to cool, nor the bedrock of interesting ideas or big themes to make it meaningful. It's less Wachowski brothers and more Jan De Bont. You'll smile, you'll wince, you'll shake your head in disbelief. But you really won't feel a thing. August 21, 2008

Oh, What A Tangled Web We Weave, When First We Practice To Deceive

I had absolutely no expectations when I saw WANTED. I actually liked it very much. I wanted to like it even more. But somehow, my suspension of disbelieve can only take so much of a beating before it throws up its hands in frustration and shouts, "Oh, come on!"

I can believe that an insignificant, aimless, sniveling accountant is in reality the son of a great assassin. I can believe that an elite group of people (including said accountant) have an ability which allows them to see more clearly, more precisely, more focused, and to experience time more slowly. I can believe that said accountant is one of these rare people, and that in a few weeks he can be completely trained as a world class assassin. I can believe in a 1000 year old "Fraternity of Assassins" who kill people for a common good, thus shaping our destiny. I can even believe in a bath of miracle wax which enables the human body to heal at an amazing rate, and that the assassins can bend bullet trajectories. I can believe in quite a lot, actually.

But when it turns out that these assassins get their kill orders from an ancient weaving loom, The Loom of Destiny, which mysteriously weaves a cloth containing a binary code that translates into the names of their impeding targets, my suspension of disbelief curls up in a corner and starts drooling. For me, apparently, it is just too much to take.

In most respects, WANTED is a very entertaining, fun, action-pack evening. Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, and James McAvoy all do a fine job. The supporting characters are quirky and interesting, and the plot actually works pretty well. The pacing is great, and the tension builds and builds, never stopping. The special effects are just plain cool. Overall, WANTED makes for quite an exciting evening.

But even in a clear cut fantasy, such as this, I still want to believe, to be drawn into the story. And the Loom of Destiny was just more than I could handle. Once the Loom was introduced, I was abruptly wrenched out the world of the story. And, disappointingly, I never got completely back in. Too bad.

For all of its faults, I still recommend WANTED. It is fun. It is entertaining. It just isn't believable.

Oh, and P. S. No rats were harmed in the making of this film.
August 21, 2008

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