Wanted

This is the kind of film that makes the Hollywood summer season great. A little under two hours of sharp wit, beautiful stars, and highly stylized mayhem, all coming together to make the most exciting, action-packed film of the year. Not that Wanted, the first American film by Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov, is masterpiece theater, but it’s ability to lavish in its own schlock chaos makes it ultimately satisfying.

The film is about Wesley Gibson, an over-anxious nobody with an unfaithful girlfriend and an obnoxious, obese boss who shouts her orders at Wesley accompanied by a stapler. Wesley has nothing to look forward to, cause every morning just presents the same misery of another monotonous day. Everything changes for Wesley when he meets Fox (Angelina Jolie), a voluptuous beauty who informs him that the father he never knew was assassinated–and then drags him away from his own possible assassination in a hale of gunfire.

The meeting between Wesley and Fox is the first of many adrenaline-fueled action scenes enhanced by slow motion and outstanding special effects. When all is said and done, Wesley discovers that Fox is a member of the Fraternity, a group of assassins who kill wrong-doers. Their leader is Sloan (Morgan Freeman), who tells Wesley that his father was a member of the Fraternity, but was killed, and Wesley is just the man to extract the revenge.

There are Rocky-like montages which show Wesley gradually becoming the killer he needs to be to get his father’s killer. He gets beat up a lot (though they’re able to use some special bath–of what I’m still not sure of–to take away scars), but he eventually learns that what he thought was over-anxiety is actually his heart working fast enough to increase his reaction-time. So, for instance, he would be able to successfully assassinate a man from inside a business meeting from the top of a moving subway.

There is a subplot of “curving bullets”–i.e. shooting the gun at an angle, as so to make the bullet change directions. Focusing on preposterous plot details like this is the first thing that you shouldn’t do when watching this film. Wanted is like the biggest fireworks show in town: it’s distant and overblown, but it will always be better entertainment than bottle rockets in your backyard. No coincidence that this film was released just one week before the 4th of July.

Director Bekmambetov explores a lot of Matrix-style special effects. With the exception of excessive slow motion, Bekmambetov pieces together this labyrinth of destruction rather well. The film never takes its foot off of the acceleration, and by maxing out the talent of the cast (which uses Terrence Stamp and Common in interesting supporting roles), what we have is a film that succeeds on pure adrenaline and fun. Not since The Matrix itself has a film been so successful with the brawn so greatly outweighing the brains.

The film is headed by James McAvoy, a Scottish actor known only to Americans for the seldom seen Atonement and playing the Faun in the first Chronicles of Narnia film. Adjusting his accent for the American Wesley (and very well, to add, considering his harsh Scotsman accent), McAvoy puts together what will surely be a star-making performance. The transformation that Wesley makes as a character from the beginning of the film to the end is quite astonishing, and only partially believable because McAvoy embodies the quirks and sarcasm of Wesley well enough to flesh him out.

Both Jolie and Freeman are having great fun, we can tell. Jolie is in full-fledged Mrs. Smith mode, and Freeman is able to throw around a couple of four-letter words that we rarely get to hear from him. A seemingly tacked on ending almost spoils the experience, but Wanted is exactly what it claims to be: a balls-to-the-wall action film, with non-stop bloodshed and enough humor to make the characters tangible. The film seems to me like a Kill Bill Vol. 1 for the second half of the decade, since the violence is so fanciful. Funny to think how this film is not creating nearly as much uproar as Bill did for its violence. That’s good, as long as there is no distraction from this truly rapturous movie roller coaster.

 

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov