There's something special about office dwelling weenie Wesley Gibson. Despite his extraordinarily pathetic life ruled by popping pills, Gibson, played by James McAvoy (Atonement), has the special ability to bend bullets and other spectacular impossibilities. Yes, I'm talking about Wanted, the new film directed by Timur Bekmambetov... and while Morgan Freeman + (Angelina + guns) sounds like an adequate recipe for a decent film, the whacky premise of Wanted makes me wish they had gone with the "maybe it'd be better if we made Wesley face-off against Neo from the Matrix" idea.
The plot of the film follows Wesley as he discovers the strength he never knew he had, with the help of a fraternity of trained assassins, of which his father just so happened to be the greatest, until he was "murdered in cold blood" by a rogue assassin a few days ago. Wesley is taken into the arms the Fraternity, a thousand year old clan of... weavers. Yes, weavers. At the Fraternity's safe house, in Chicago, Wesley is trained to be a lethal bullet bending machine by the foxy femme fetal Fox, Angelina Jolie (Tombraider), under the supervision of the Fraternity's leader Sloan (Morgan Freeman, Shawshank Redemption). Once his training is complete, Wesley will be a full fledged assassin with a spectacularly complete life, something all assassins can boast.
As it turns out, the Fraternity is the hand and tool of fate. Their targets are assigned to them by an obnoxiously contrived source free from human tampering... an ever growing quilt that holds random binary codes in its fabric... which was discovered all those centuries ago by the Fraternity. Neat huh?
The film features a lot of loud noises and spectacular scenes of nonsensical action that by golly looks really neat. The best moment of the film comes as Jolie steps out of a bathtub and we see the top of her buttocks. Oh how all the desperate young men in the audience liked that! This film was rather insulting in many ways, making me believe that the sophistication of most movie-goers today is at a level where nothing needs to make sense for them to appreciate a film, which explains why my drunk friends liked it more than I did.
The writers barely shell out a character arc for our Wesley. His character is convincing but so contrived. He really has no motivation, and never even wonders why his father left in the first place. A lot of the script in this film could be described like Wesley's former life, inadequate.
The acting in the film is alright, and Jolie does a terrific job of creating a new character despite its similarity to other roles she has played. Unfortunately there is not enough Jolie in this film. Morgan Freeman is a wonderful man, but I'm going to forget he was in this film. James McAvoy who was great in Atonement, does a standup job as Wesley, but I think he could have used better direction around the middle of the film.
The great action sequences are fun to look at, but nothing really and truly new and unique. It constantly reminded me of the matrix, and the insufferable story really put me over the edge. Wanted, hah. I *wanted* my money back.
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