Synopsis

Wesley Gibson is an unhappy cubical worker who hates basically every element of his life. One day he's kidnapped by a beautiful, dangerous woman who tells him that he is the son of one of the world's greatest assassins, and that he possesses his father's amazing killing abilities. Wesley learns about his father and the fraternity of assassins he worked for while fending off attacks from a rogue agent.

Pros:

• Great looking special effects.


• Plenty of gallows humor (if you're into that sort of thing).


• Bloody fun escapism for adults ... and adults only.

Cons:

• Ultra violence ... a "con" for many people.


• The movie feels fifteen minutes too long. Or thereabouts.

Generally:

I guess I'll say three on a five scale. This is an extremely violent movie, but not irredeemably so, and not without it's charms.


Extended Review:

It's been a good summer for comic book fans. Batman, the Hulk and Iron Man were all brought to the screen in big blockbuster movies, and there wasn't a dud in the bunch. Wanted is an adaptation of a limited run comic book series by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. The movie apparently takes more liberties with the source material than the other movies I mentioned, but maintains the title's "adults only" core. It's probably the weakest comic book based movie of the summer, but it's still a decent movie of a kind. Just don't assume that the "R" rating is a fluke. Wanted is a "hard R" film. This is stylized comic-book fun for grown-ups only.

If you want to make a movie like Wanted, I can give you a "can't miss" recipe:

Ingredients:

• A generous helping of the gleeful, gory violence of 300


• A handful of the remorseless anti-hero character types from Sin City


• A dollop of the cinematography, "bullet time" effects and impossible physics of The Matrix


• The dangerous, underground "secret society" themes from Fight Club ... and while you're at it, get a pinch of that film's oedipus complex motif, too. And borow Fight Club's anti-materialism themes. In fact, the more Fight Club you throw in, the better.

Throw those ingredients together and season with two or three big-name Hollywood stars (Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, a few other faces you might recognize). The recipe feeds a theater full of people, as long as they have strong stomachs and don't mind a little acid reflux.

There's nothing terribly original here. But if you're in the right mood, it's amusing fluff. Just go in expecting to be entertained entirely (and only) by the movie's special effects and slick black humor. There's not much here in the way of story, subtext, or ideas. There's no real character development, just the same tired old Walter Mitty act that the big studios have recycled for years. The plot is fairly predictable and the ending is a cliche. Oh, it's one of the better cliches, one of my favorites, but a cliche nonetheless.

Instead of originality or ideas, Wanted offers up a stream of words and images that seem designed to offend. But the movie is just barely smart enough for me to call it satire instead of garbage. Over the course of Wanted's running time you'll see people slaughtered by the dozens. That might have offended me, actually, if the movie had seemed to take itself seriously at all. But it doesn't. The is the cinematic equivalent of a bunch of kids with toy guns running around yelling "Bang! Bang! You're dead!" Silly, sure. Pointless? You bet. Fun? Yep.

What else does Wanted offer? Well, there are car chases that make Transporter 2 look plausible. There are exploding rats, specially designed to please the PETA crowd. Oh, and you get to hear Morgan Freeman drop the MF bomb. His character in Wanted ain't about to drive Miss Daisy anywhere.

Now that Wanted is playing in second-run theaters it's probably a reasonable bargain. You could do worse than to spend a couple of bucks on this movie. Or you might want to just wait and rent it on DVD in a couple of months. The film got me to laugh a a few times and a few of the special effects really did look damn cool. This ain't Schindler's List ... this ain't even The Dark Knight. But it doesn't aim to be. Wanted is designed to be a cool looking, outrageous mess with nothing serious to say at all. And it is.

Trailer:

Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies