Movie Review: Wanted
I’m going to preface this by saying that I was moderately excited to see Wanted. From the trailer, I was anticipating lots of crazy bullet-bending action, car chases, and, well, Angelina Jolie. In fact, I recommend you go watch the trailer right now. I’ll wait. It’s pretty good.
That done with, this film was more or less appalling, and you definitely shouldn’t waste time on the full thing. It’s one of those movies that, at times, becomes hilarious because of its abject awfulness, but not with enough frequency to in any way redeem it. This is the point at which I would normally tell you that this review contains spoilers, but that might make it seem as though there is some part of this movie which I could ruin even more.
Wanted opens with the slow-motion, bullet-time, high-rise-jumping assassination of Neo Mr. X, to let the audience understand the kind of shit the bad guy, Cross, is capable of. Seriously, he will shoot you from three miles away. Then, we switch to the protagonist and his humble beginnings. James McAvoy is Wesley, a misfit who enjoys taking shit from people, feeling sorry for himself, and having panic attacks. He also happens to be the world’s best-looking male accountant. We get to listen to him whine for at least 10 minutes to establish just how much of a pussy he is. He is bullied around at work, his best friend is boning his girlfriend, and every night he goes to bed dreading the next dreary day of his meaningless life. Perhaps we’re supposed to sympathize with Wesley’s existential quandary, but all I could think about was how he was only a slit wrist and a myspace page away from being a full-on emo.
Eventually Cross tries to shoot him (who wouldn’t?) and the subtly-codenamed Fox (Angelina Jolie) turns up. Things are looking good. She tells him that Mr. X was his father, blah, blah, the man who killed him is right behind you…well, you saw it in the trailer. After a meh car chase (don’t worry, again, everything cool was in the trailer) we are introduced to the Fraternity, a band of assassins who, according to the opening text, were founded by weavers over a thousand years ago. Yes, weavers. Don’t worry, there’s a good explanation. Anyway, the modern-day Fraternity is headed by Sloan (Morgan Freeman). He dishes out the usual bullshit about destiny and gives Wesley his father’s pistol, an elegant weapon from a more civilized age. Their conversation goes something like this:
Wesley: Oh noes, a g-g-gun? That can’t have belonged to my father. You’ve got the wrong downtrodden maladjusted schmuck.
Sloan: No, no, Wesley, you don’t understand. Your father was one of us. Now you will be, too. Those panic attacks you get? That’s when your heartrate goes to over 400, enabling you to react with superhuman reflexes. Also, this means the laws of physics don’t apply to you.
Wesley: Shit, I’m a badass, just like my dad! I just never knew! Look out bitches, here I come!
Sloan: Not so fast, son. First you have to go through our rigorous training program. And by rigorous training program, I mean we’re going to tie you down and beat the shit out of you.
So after a week of being beaten up, knifed, and then resurrected in a healing wax bath by a vodka-swilling Russian—true story—he’s ready to go. This is when Sloan decides it’s time for Wesley to learn the deep secrets of the Fraternity. As it turns out, the first members those many years ago were weavers who discovered that by interpreting the imperfections in the cloth from their looms as a binary code that stands for names, they would be told by Fate who they should kill. You know, because it can’t balance itself. (This is a different Fate than the one that gives people heart attacks, apparently). The modern Fraternity gets its kill orders directly from the gigantic LOOM OF FATE, helpfully interpreted by Sloan. At this point, Wesley laughs uncontrollably and walks his ass out of there, never to return. Hah, no, just kidding; he actually doesn’t have second thoughts until he’s about to pull the trigger on his first target. This is when a horrible thought occurs to him: how exactly does the LOOM OF FATE, in all it’s loomy wisdom, know for reals that this guy is bad?
This is when Fox gets her little speech. It’s only about 10 lines, but it’s the only time she says more than about 2 consecutive words in the movie. She helpfully explains that once there was a very bad man who the LOOM OF FATE had scheduled to die, but that the Fraternity had failed to off. This man had later forced a little girl to watch as he tortured and killed her whole family, and had then branded the girl with a coat hanger. Then Fox stands up—and you see a mark on her neck—and—HOLY FUCK IT’S HER! Lesson learned!. So our hero Wesley goes on his merry way, happy to be the all-smashing wang of fate.
The rest of the movie is more or less in the same vein. Wesley finally catches up to Cross on a train in Europe which they happen to derail as it crosses (I shit you not) the bridge of Khazad-Dûm. The train car falls for about five minutes into the abyss delved greedily and deep by the dwarves of old, but Cross, Wesley, and Fox all survive at the bottom. Then—get ready for it—Wesley finally shoots Cross, only to hear his last dying whisper…I AM your father…and then they fall down to the river below.
Well, shit. So apparently the Fraternity is bad, Mr. X is just some random dude, and Sloan was making up the targets instead of faithfully reporting the orders of the LOOM OF FATE (who knew?). As you would expect, Wesley then mounts a one-man vendetta on the Fraternity. He kills off about 50 lackeys before finally confronting Fox and Sloan with about 6 henchmen. Sloan then explains that he had to make up the kill orders because, as it turns, out, the LOOM OF FATE wanted everybody dead. He concludes his speech with the only really good line in this movie, which I’m not going to spoil. Then Fox kills everyone in the room with a single bullet except for Wesley and Sloan (even herself), leaving time for Wesley to give his own little ending spiel before capping Sloan. Blech.
There were a host of things to hate about this movie, so I’ll just touch on some of the more bothersome ones. One prominent annoyance was the main character. From the beginning of the movie, his dejected soliloquies might lead us to think that the whole film is intended to take a dark, film noir quality. Instead, he’s the only one with this attitude. This means that he basically he comes across as a perpetually snivelling little asshole. To paraphrase Shoot ‘Em Up, he’s just a pussy with a gun. The biggest problem here, though, is that we have to listen to this guy complain for half the goddamn movie, because some genius decided that he should be the narrator.
Then we have the opposite problem with Fox. I’ve honestly never seen Angelina Jolie do anything that could be described as “decent acting”, but I’ve never seen a movie in which she didn’t act at all. (Actually, that’s not true; I have seen Beowulf.) She hardly has any lines at all. This isn’t for lack of screen time, it’s just that she doesn’t say anything. She’s basically this omnipresent accessory with a cardboard personality and the EXACT SAME FUCKING SMILE in every scene, no matter what is happening. The best part is at the end, when she kills everyone. At this point, she has gone from being good to being bad to being good again. What a woman of mystery! Except if you think about it, at the end she decided that instead of siding with Sloan, she wants to believe in the binary code woven in the mistakes of a gigantic loom, so it’s more like she went from good to bad to retarded.
Another annoyance is the glaring contrast between the sci-fi-ish action themes and sequences and the more realistic parts. There are really only two completely magical parts of the movie: the LOOM OF FATE and the bending of bullets. There’s no spoon-bending. Nobody can fly. In the beginning, we are told that this is set “six weeks ago”, and it’s in Chicago to boot. This means that when Wesley starts shooting bullets in circles, it’s absolutely laughable. The people who made this thing really didn’t seem to be able to decide what kind of movie they wanted (aha, ok, I’m done). There isn’t enough magic to qualify this as a fantasy instead of reality. It all takes itself too seriously to be one of those flicks that is awesome for its ridiculousness. It is way too far out qualify as merely stylized violence. To cap it all off, the director was apparently under the impression that it would be way awesome if every single action sequence were in super slow-motion. Seriously, it’s 2008. Bullet time was awesome in the Matrix, but that was like 10 years ago, man.
I have to say one more thing about Wesley. I really can’t overstate how goddamn obnoxious this character is. He is supposed to be this guy who goes through a fantastic transformation from an apathetic loser to a real hero, but it comes across as more of a change from an asshole to an asshole who could kill you. As if they couldn’t get the point across with the actual acting, we are repeatedly told that Wesley is taking control of his life. Wesley narrates this directly at the viewer, in the most condescending manner possible. Actual last few lines of the movie:
This is me taking control, from Sloan, from the fraternity, from Janis, billing reports, ergonomic keyboards, from cheating girlfriends and sack of shit best friends. This is me taking back control of my life. What the fuck have you done lately?
Seriously, fuck off. After this disaster of a film, I really can’t wait for The Dark Knight.
No comments yet.