Movie Review: WANTED [ 5/10 ]

Deflecting a bullet by a bullet might make you go oooh with awe but you have to admit that it’s a bit too profound…

Timur Bekmambetov’s WANTED stars an impressive line-up with Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy, and Morgan Freeman but far bigger were the holes in the movie itself. Oh and did I mention the action was a bit over-the-top?

The movie opens with a the information about a certain secret society of assassins working for an equally secret group of ‘weavers’ for some thousand years. The assassins call themselves The Fraternity and instead of the regular hired-killers decree, it is revealed that they work for a higher purpose: Fate. Their assassinations alter the fate and the way the future is to take shape and they do all this by reading the killers name from these looms of Fate. I was immediately reminded of the ancient Greek myth about the three sisters of Fate and the looms of fate they used to weave. Credit to the movie for delving and connecting to a deeper subject here than the regular ‘we are assassins. Killing is what we do best. period‘ premise.

So in comes our man of the hour, Wesley, a loser at best with a shitty job, a non-existent bank balance, and living with the knowledge that his girlfriend is sleeping with his best friend. He doesn’t have the balls to stand up to his irritating boss or to his girlfriend. In short, he is a nobody. The one night as he turns around at a superstore counter, a multiple tattoo bearing woman by the name of Fox blurts out that her dad was a top assasin with the Fraternity and the man who killed him is standing behind him. As expected, carnage explodes on the screen with Fox and the rouge assassin Cross blasting out mirrors, cars, cornflakes boxes, what have you. A car chase follows that seems to generate more of mess than when Godzilla walked through the Big Apple. Seemed to me that the aim behind the movie so far was to make people go ‘wow that is so cool’ than entice the audience in to mystery.

Soon after that, our one-time loser-of-a-special-kind hero can shoot the wings off a fly in motion and a few more ‘wow’s’ echoed across the hall. It was interesting to see McAvoy the meek Mr. Tumnus (The Chronicles of Narnia) turn in to a lean, mean fighting machine after he is ‘adopted’ by the fraternity. He can curve bullets and slow down his heart for super-human speed and agility and of course his bank balance goes through the roof.

Let me come back to the action sequences. Mostly computer generated as is the case with almost all action productions these days, this movie is ideal for those who are willing to block off the part of their brain that analyzes rationalism and common sense before entering the theater. We’ve seen enough of those with Jason Bourne around thank you very much. The movie makes a point of blasting human skulls with straight or curved bullets through out and I for one lost count if how many times I saw brain matter splattering around. It made the SAW franchise seem watchable.

As a review from teletext points out:

Take a slice of The Matrix, stir in pinches of X-Men and Da Vinci Code and garnish with a sprinkling of Hellraiser – and Wanted sounds like a re-heated Sunday roast. Add the bloody viscera of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and you’ll think it’s a dodgy dish.

Watching it was similar to having a shake of The Matrix and Fight Club. Only that matrix story held itself beautifully together Fight Club was well… about fights and blood. The theme that drove our hero forward reminded me of Luke Skywalker from Star Wars; on a quest to kill Darth Vader to avenge his father, until Vader tells him that he IS his father! Oops!

Hated the ending. Despite the twist in the second half with an important revelation that changes the course of the movie, and let’s just even ignore for a second that the movie was ridiculously stretched, the ending should have been an open one with something left for the audience’s imagination.

Movielicious Ratings: [ 5/10 ]

Watch trailer for WANTED