Wanted

Title: Wanted
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Cast: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman
Year: 2008
MPAA: Rated R for strong bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and some sexuality.
Date of Review: July 1, 2008

Pure male fantasy can be fun. Any man who says he wouldn’t want to give up his day-job to become a millionaire superhero would be lying. That dream of being a total badass who is practically invincible, admired by his peers, and always gets the girl is something that’s ingrained into our consciousness as the very definition of a “man”. To feel that your presence is wanted somewhere - that you are the only one who can do something that is going to change the world, and everyone that you look up to will love you for it. And so, with the aptly named Wanted, a story is told that’s part Fight Club, part The Matrix, and completely ridiculous.

A ridiculous movie can be fun, as long as the ridiculous-to-self serious ratio is kept in check. Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik! is possibly one of the most ridiculous movies ever made - the hero actually utters the classic line “This suit is so strong, I could swim through the center of the sun!” - but it never forgets what it is. Wanted on the other hand has a near schizophrenic mix of self-satirizing action (such as a hitman running so fast through an office building that all the papers in the offices are blown into a frenzy from his speed), and dialogue delivered so seriously that it seems the writers and filmmakers actually took these ideas seriously. The “Loom of Fate”, weaving cotton into a plain white cloth, which, when looked at under a magnifying glass, has a series of misweaves that can be read as binary code for the names of people who need to be killed in order to restore balance to the world? WHAT? Morgan Freeman delivers his expository lines with such serious demeanor that it leaves one to wonder how he can do work like this and Dreamcatcher, then turn around and say Batman Begins was the first movie he ever did strictly for the money.

Wanted’s ruminations on the “anti-establishment” mindset and conspiracy theories make Laurence Fishburne’s philosophical rants in The Matrix feel subtle. As Morgan Freeman talks about the history of “The Fraternity” and their quest to keep balance in the world by executing anyone that “The Loom of Fate” sees as being an evil-doer, it’s hard to keep a straight face. It’s even harder when we are shown the members of “The Fraternity”, consisting of Angelina Jolie, rapper Common, and a fat guy with a Cuban accent worthy of “Al Pacino’s Stamp of Approval”. These actors ham it up with an intense desire to look and sound as cool as possible. Again, things would be different if they had embraced the inherent ridiculousness of the story and its action, but every twist the movie throws - and there are plenty - just makes things more convoluted and stupid, resulting in one leaving the theatre feeling like a gunplay soap opera was shown, rather than an action movie.

The action is impressive at the beginning of the movie, as we see a few people get shot in the head in super-slow motion, focusing on the journey of the bullet through their brains, then backwards through the air and back into the gun that shot it. But the film quickly becomes a one-trick pony, as this technique is used repeatedly in every action sequence throughout the movie. Imagine if “bullet-time” had been used during every violent encounter in The Matrix, then it wouldn’t have seemed nearly as amazing when Neo did his pivotal bullet-dodge on the rooftop. Such is the problem with Wanted - it’s so overdone to start off with, that by the end when we see James McAvoy in action - a regular “prodigal son” whose power exceeds everyone else’s combined - it doesn’t seem too impressive. Everything the film has to offer is covered in the first half hour.

Is this really what we’ve come to? Does it really take this kind of posing, slow-motion and inhumanly fast editing to entertain us? Having recently watched Heat, the assault rifle fight in the middle of a crowded L.A. street is easily one of the best, most intense action sequences in American cinema, and not one superhuman assassin is present. That unreality can be fun, but it can also go too far and take us out of the experience - particularly when there’s an abundance of poor CGI, something Wanted suffers from greatly.

Is it entertaining? At times. In the same way that Crank was entertaining, but it doesn’t know it. Wanted thinks it is The Matrix, as if it is redefining what makes an exciting action sequence, and giving us this “bullet-cam” technique which could be the next big thing in American action cinema. I certainly hope not, because the world was given enough of it in this one film alone. Poor, nerdy Wesley Gibson’s journey from computer-jockey to gun-toting badass is a shallow one, and completely unbeweavable.

4 / 10