Wanted

I don’t really have time for a full review today, but I figured I’d post some quick thoughts on this flick before I totally forget about it (since it’s almost entirely unmemorable). I was going to do quick recaps on a few other films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall but, well, I got kinda lazy.

• Wanted (2008) Starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, a drunk Russian and a cameo by the special effects of The Matrix

What would Brad say?

Predictable and, frankly, rather silly, this movie isn’t nearly as entertaining as it should have been or half as substantial as it could have been. Ignoring the laughably bad special effects, the movie offers a grating lead performance by James McAvoy (a talented actor, perhaps, but he apparently watched a few too many John Wayne movies while trying to develop his American accent) and a “just-there-for-the-hell-of-it” role for Angelina Jolie, who deserves better. The movie offers little surprises — why is Jolie’s character a ruthless killer? She tells us a sob story about a young girl’s family being murdered in front of her eyes as a child, leading her to a life of violence. Who do you think that young girl was? Most people who aren’t clinically braindead would probably assume at least ten seconds into the story that it’s Jolie. But after her glassy-eyed story ends, there’s a quick clue thrown in to let us know that the young girl was, indeed, Jolie’s character. You know, just in case we missed the whole preceding scene. I mean, some people have to use the bathroom during the movie. Just sayin’.

The movie takes its audience’s intelligence for granted and just reminds us of superior films of both the action genre and the existentialist action picture mold; it’s like The Matrix thrown in a blender with Chuck Palahniuk’s brand of clueless pseudo-intellectual nihilism (God, that Nietzsche dude was awesome!).

If I sound like I hated the movie, though, I really didn’t. I just didn’t find it particularly good. It’s just too pretentious and draws too many comparisons with better movies by its very nature, and overreaches by a fair amount. I just want brainless action scenes, but the sequences are so hyper-stylized and trendy and flashy that it feels like Michael Bay on a cheap budget (honestly, the jumping-over-the-bridge-across-the-highway-onto-the-moving-train shot is one of the worst CGI displays I’ve witnessed in such a big production. I know I said I was ignoring the bad CGI in this review, but I lied: it’s tremendously poor and hard to miss).

As many faults as the film has, the direction itself is fairly distinct and the execution behind some of the ideas (like the bending bullets) is done well enough, but the problem is that the ideas in the first place are so stupid. I know the film’s based on a respected graphic novel, and that’s fine; this stuff often works far better in graphic novels. Sometimes literal adaptations can be tricky. But honestly, some of the stuff here is just laughable. The opening sequence with a businessman propelling himself out of a skyscraper across a cityscape onto another building while assassinating hit men with his magical bullets would have been cool in 1998. But even then, the fact that the actor’s facial expressions reveal him to appear as if he’s in the middle of  an epic bowel movement might have bothered people then as much as they bothered me now. Over-acting, much? Yes, just a tad. Perhaps they should have hired this guy instead. (Check the 2:03 mark onwards; the dude with the bloody head? He does a better job of appearing to be engraged than the actor they hired for the opening sequence of Wanted).

I do give them props, however, for being perhaps the first film ever to feature Morgan Freeman in a role that isn’t accompanied by a wise narrative voice-over (I’m ignoring those Batman movies because they don’t count. Why? Because I make up the rules). (2.5/5)