Blisteringly stylish action thriller (based upon the graphic miniseries of the same name by Mark Millar) starring Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, and a fresh faced James McAvoy, directed by the man who has given us two parts of the Watch Trilogy (Day Watch, and Night Watch), Timur Bekmambetov, Wanted is one of the most outrageous, most insanely crazy films to come out of Hollywood in 2008. Directed like a mad video game, Bebmambetov shows just how cool a visualist he really is, this time to a broad spectrum Western audience market. Still unable to direct a film with logic and character development (like the previously reviewed Day Watch), Bebmambetov makes Wanted a lot better than it’s initial idea would grant on the surface: assassins taking orders from a medieval weaving machine are being killed by a rogue member of their Fraternity, and they train up McAvoy to take him down. The focus of the film is less about personal growth, moral fortitude, or even ethical behaviour: all of these traditional human traits are brushed aside like so much tissue paper by guns, bullets, blood and the sight of Jolie butt-naked in perfect, high-definition focus. More on this later. Wanted is about killing. Simple.

McAvoy headlines the film as Wesley Gibson, a stressed, personally stunted loser whose boss rides him all day with incessant yammering and power plays, his best friend ducks off at lunchtime to have illicit sex with Gibson’s girlfriend, and who barely has enough money in his bank account to but a decent meal. While buying his prescription medication for his stress disorder, McAvoy is confronted by the mysterious woman known as Fox (Jolie), who almost immediately engages in a shoot-out with a strange man (Thomas Kretschmann) before kidnapping Wesley and transporting him to a safe, secret, hideout. Wesley, it seems, is the son of a dangerous assassin, who was recently killed by the man in the store (so we are led to believe). In order to give Wesley a better life, he is given the chance to learn the skills of assassination like his father, by the man running the Fraternity, Sloan (Morgan Freeman). In a brutal homage, we see Wesley begin his training, with devastating results. Sloan shows Wesley a mysterious cloth, made from a medieval weaving machine, which has the ability to determine the Fraternity’s next “job” (who do they kill next) and we come to understand that either these people are certifiably insane, or there’s something more mysterious at work here.

It goes without saying that Wesley, trained by the best assassins in the world, soon becomes part of the Fraternity, and is sent on his own missions to kill. What he really wants, however, is the chance to go after Cross, the man who killed his father. When finally given the chance, Wesley is shocked to learn a terrible truth, and his quest for vengeance begins in earnest.

Wanted is the kind of action film that could only be made in the modern era. Using state of the art effects, stunning stunt and driving sequences, a massive train-destruction sequence, and some amazing gunfights, Wanted is ballsy, original and brash, never once pausing for breath, and ensuring you never again look at guns that can fire around corners the same way again. I really dug this film, it’s fair to say. Some would argue that the film begins well, with a fairly cool narrative structure similar to a Tom Tykwer movie. Then the action begins, and the slo-mo, freeze frame, hyperkinetic razzle-dazzle begins, with the camera taking us into extreme close-up, long distance, super-speed, widescreen epic carnage in loving, lascivious detail, until it literally pummels the breath from your body. McAvoy looks exceedingly out of his depth at the beginning, and rightly so, since he’s playing a man so belittled by those around him his existence is simply a bundle of snowballing neuroses. He doesn’t immediately strike you as an “action star” in the traditional mould, and that’s perhaps the point: he could be anybody… you, me, who takes up the weapons and begins the life of an assassin.

There’s an amazingly cool car chase through the streets of Chicago, with Jolie clambering out almost every window of the vehicle to return fire to the pursuing rogue agent. There are moments where the effects perhaps don’t quite click, for me, but they are done so fast, so frenetic, that it’s hardly worth pausing to think about. Jolie looks every inch a screen star, although her character is, oddly, almost monosyllabic and reticent to communicate. When she finally does, however, the moment is brutal. There’s enough “sultry Angelina” in this film to fill a dozen tabloid magazines. And, just for the men in the audience (and that’s probably most of you, I’ll bet!) she even reveals a fine, post baby body complete with tattoos. Like McAvoy, we are captivated. But it remains hardly one of her more defining roles, and is perhaps closer to her Mr & Mrs Smith character than her Oscar winning showing in Girl, Interrupted.

However, the rest of the cast performs admirably, in what is essentially an updated cowboy flick. McAvoy begins the film as an office drone, redundantly performing menial tasks to be paid, so he can support his unfaithful girlfriend. He’s damaged, a seething mess of tension and nerves, anxiously anticipating the next run-in with his overbearing and obnoxious department head. His best friend, Barry (Chris Pratt) is not-so-secretly having sex with Wesleys girlfriend behind Wesleys back, although Wesley actually knows about it. It’s perhaps his own sense of failure and fear of abandonment that he doesn’t leave her. McAvoy journeys from thrombosis alert to sure, suave, deadly assassin as the film progresses, and although this is a given due to the very nature of the movie, it’s a kind of lurch between the former, and the latter. One minute, he’s a nervous wreck, and the next, he’s a decidedly more calm, cool character not afraid to unleash his talent upon the world. Perhaps not quite so quickly as that, but the feeling of sudden about-face permeates through the last third of the movie.

Morgan Freeman, always a grand master at being the Wise Leader/Violent Mob Boss type character, is given the tough job of controlling the Fraternity, and outsourcing the contract killing to various members of the group. It’s another phone-in performance from Freeman, who can do this stuff virtually in his sleep, and he adds, or offers, nothing new that we haven’t seen before countless times. Still, he’s fun to watch, and brings a level of gravitas to Wanted that always ran the risk of being obliterated in the cacophony of bullets and blood. Rap star Common, who looks more like a cast-off from the WWE, plays a fellow assassin and gun expert, who trains Wesley in how to curve bullets.

And here’s the films’ Bullet Time. Wanted‘s main claim to fame is the idea that bullets can be curved in mid-air, simply by rapid movement of the weapon you hold. The ability to shoot around corners is alluded to in the opening action salvo between Jolie and Kretschmann, with a gun that’s bent at 90 degrees, used by Jolie, to shoot around a corner at a hidden attacker. Later in the film, this idea is expanded upon as Wesley is forced to shoot a target hidden behind an animal carcass and Jolie, who stands in his way. Even later in the film, both Wesley and the rogue assassin cause their bullets to actually collide in mid-air with the kind of accuracy thats utterly impossible for humans to achieve on their own. It’s highly fanciful, fatuously gratuitous, and altogether entertaining. After all, that’s what cinema can deliver: the impossible can look real, and the improbably can happen. Like the moment where Fox and Wesley get the kiss in front of Wesleys ex-girlfriend. What mere mortal actually gets to kiss Angelina Jolie these days? None, it’s traditionally done by uber-screen-icon Brad Pitt. Yet, James McAvoy gets a chance, although the end result isn’t as exciting as you’d imagine. The enormous lips on Jolie’s face (once termed “slugs” by a particularly nasty critic) almost swallow poor McAvoy whole, and the scene with them kissing is about as sexy as an abortion. Still, it’s not about the kissing, really, it’s about the cool gun-play and fast, frenetic ways in which the characters try and kill each other off.

The other major set-piece is the train sequence, in which a fast moving commuter train is hurled off a bridge (suspended across an impossibly high canyon) and gradually starts to fall in. Dynamic, hold-your-breath tense, this sequence is one of the more bravura moments in a film replete with them. It’s utterly insane piece of storytelling, but it’s done in such a way that you cannot help but smile.

Wanted is a high class piece of utter pulp filmmaking. There’s not a serious moment to be had in a film like this, with impossible stunts and grand, noisy acting performances. Blood and viscera spills across the screen, cars and trucks screech through city streets in a manner befitting Need For Speed, almost never colliding with oncoming traffic, bodies and limbs flail in gorgeous slow motion photography, CGI bullets and other ephemera glide through space like some sort of beautiful ballet of symphonic destruction: Wanted is a true, genuine, modern blockbuster, filled to the brim (and almost overflowing) with style, fun and a sense of the ridiculous. If you try taking this film seriously, then you’re in for a disappointing ride. If you set your brain into neutral, you’re more likely to appreciate it.

Wanted is top shelf trash, polished and buffed to a glittering, dazzling entertainment package in the vein of nonsense films like Armageddon and The Rock. Great fun.

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Who wrote this?

Rodney Twelftree

“Some people say I like films. Those people are wrong. I *love* films.” – Me. I said this.

Rodney has been writing about films for well over two decades, appreciates a good wine, the love of his wife and kids, and the affection of his dog and cats. He has a fondness of cheesy 90’s action and classic Hollywood, hates that physical media is disappearing, and wishes somebody would make a high-budget series of The Neverending Story.

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