A Review I – Wanted (2008) – to do Quite Badly

“Oh my God! Oh my God! What the fuck just happened?!”

I recently trudged eagerly into a movie theatre where watching Wanted (2008), directed by Timur Bekmambetov, was the main, wait, only item on my agenda.

The opening shot is one where after entering an office a well built gentleman garners the full attention of a most comely young lass who previous to that was on the phone, details of which escape me as in the blink of an eye all hell breaks loose. Her brains and other bloody contents of her head take residence on the walls. Shots ring out all over the place with glass shattering as he makes for the lift at the end of the corridor, which just happens to be in direct line of sight to the rooftop where the shots came from.

The lift opens and with Matixesque visual effects, air rippling, amplified slow motion he uses the lift wall as an anchor to make a dash for his attackers who he lays to waste with such disdain and ease as you would in tossing out last night’s garbage, all this as he hurtles through the air between the two buildings at superhuman speed. Shortly I was treated to a slug [not that one, the one of a bullet] reversing through his head, all bulges included, as he stood on an X marked on the rooftop as the camera follows the path the bullet followed all the way back into the barrel of the gun.

The story is culled from a graphic novel by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones and follows a lily-livered accounts clerk, Wesley Allan Gibson [James McAvoy] in a big nameless accounting firm, apathetic and reliant on anti-anxiety pills to get through the day. He gets recruited into the world of violence and a thrill a minute life after an incident in a pharmacy one evening on his way home to an abusive, cheating, nagging, live in girlfriend. Sloan [Morgan Freeman] heads a band of amoral assassins, who has been around for over one thousand years, so I heard, called The Fraternity. A lot of very loud, quite graphic scenes ensue after that which involves looms, a large factory some mice and healing baths. All this, I assure you has to be seen to be believed. The swearing in this movie, caught me by surprise it did, even Morgan Freeman did it! Gasp!

Total carnage ensues right after the training where in one scene Wesley gets pounded to a veritable pulp by the might and grace of Fox [Angelina Jolie, yummy! Slurp! Those lips, the…chest area!] all in the name of training, interspersed with lots of loud gunfights and spectacular car chase scenes which I must say distracted from the movie lacking in scripting and plot base, making up in quality photography and direction and over the shoulder running shots and lots of zoom and pull out shots that left me quite dizzy at times. This is all terribly exciting; what with all that piercing and bullets going around obstructions and what have you.

This is definitely a high energy movie, fast and with continuous bang bang, kaboom shoot outs and suitably gory exploding craniums added to the directors enthusiasm in consigning previously intact and quite well put together props into piles of rubble, the red Corvette’s demise was rather painful though, come to think of it, the plot line is almost predictable with all the secrets exposed, a scene of revelations, all regular stuff failing to deliver a mind blowing conflagration of ideas that would evoke a feeling of some sort, something worth fighting for, The Matrix, that kind of thing. It skims the thin line between a totally forgettable movie save for the star studded cast doing what they know how to do best, and a special effects crew that is quite convincing and a director who knows his gore to the core.

Boring stuff about the movie:
Credits: Directed by Timur Bekmambetov; written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan, based on a tale by Mr. Brandt and Mr. Haas and the comic books by Mark Millar and J. G. Jones; Universal Pictures. 1 hour 44 minutes running time.

Cast: James McAvoy (Wesley), Angelina Jolie (Fox), Morgan Freeman (Sloan), Terence Thomas Kretschmann (Cross), Stamp (Pekwarsky), and Common (Gunsmith).

Photographs, those ones up there ^^: Universal Pictures.