Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov, 2008): USA

Reviewed by Kevin Tran. Viewed at the Arlington Theater.

Wanted is Timur Berkmambetov’s first Hollywood film. The Russian director is better known for his Night Watch series, which broke the Russian box-office record. Like with Night Watch, Wanted is adapted from a popular (graphic) novel by Mark Miller and J.G. Jones. However, Wanted is all style with no substance and contain none of the beautiful (computer) imagery that Night Watch did. Yet even with its high budget and amazing casting (James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, and Morgan Freeman) the film still falls flat.

Wesley Gibson (McAvoy) suffers from panic attacks and lives a miserable life as an innocent, sheltered accountant. His life is over-runned by his demanding, overweight boss and his cheating girlfriend. Although, when a clan of assassins known as “The Fraternity” comes to recruit Wesley as their newest member, he is inducted unwillingly, but eventually learns to finally take control of his life. He then trains, with the help of Fox (Jolie) to hunt down and kill a rogue assassin who assassinated Wesley’s father and aims to destroy the Fraternity.

The shallow plot tries to remain interesting by taking some sharp turns here and there, but ultimately, it only functions as a way to see fast car chases, explosions, and of course, gun fights. But what is even more shallow are the characters, typical one-sided, badasses with cool nicknames. McAvoy’s change in the film is so incredibly noticeable – from helpless accountant to deadly assassin – it’s embarrassing.

The action sequences are somewhat captivating, but grow tiresome after seeing the same stunts done again and again. The motto of The Faternity is: “kill one, save a thousand.” Yet in some sequences its kill a thousand, just to kill one. The film uses slow motion in almost every scene to highlight how amazing shooters the characters are: curving bullets, knocking wings off a fly, and shootings bullets down with more bullets (all of these can be seen in the trailer of the film).

My recommendation is to just stick with the trailer and go see Wall-E.

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Published:
06.28.08 / 6pm
Category:
Films