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Movie Review: Wanted
I went to see Wanted for just one reason: Angelina Jolie. I reckon I'd go and see her in just about anything. I wasn't sure I'd enjoy the film: it's about a league of assassins and it has an 18 certificate: that would normally be a big red flag for me. But I really, really enjoyed it.
Let's start with what's wrong with the film, because there is a lot wrong with it and I want to get that part out of the way.
If I've gotten the right impression from the various reviews and articles, Wanted is based on a very dark comic-book in which the super-villains have defeated all the super-heroes and taken over the world, which would at least make sense of the notion of a league of assassins being the good guys. However, this background is missing from the movie. Instead we have...well, "preposterous" is the kindest word for the plot. A thousand-year-old secret society of assassins formed from a league of cloth weavers, who take their orders from "the Loom of Fate" (no, I'm not making that up!). It's as if someone figured the comic-book plot would be too much for mainstream audiences, but didn't realise they were replacing it with something even Dan Brown would agree strains credulity just a wee bit. But what the hell, right?
It's also an extremely violent and misogynistic film. The latter is probably not surprising for an action movie, especially one based on a comic ('cause we all know what a bastion of gender equality the comics industry is, right?) but it must be said anyway. The movie offers three examples of womanhood: the fat-bitch-boss who bullies everyone to hide her own low self-esteem and apparently has a stapler fetish; the sleazy girlfriend who complains and nags and cheats; and then there's Angelina Jolie's character, Fox. Fox, though there's some attempt to make her sympathetic, is still essentially a sociopathic sex-kitten. Real bad score there. I'll admit that the men don't come off much better, though. None of the characters are truly likeable.
The moral centre of the film is...well, missing. The core characters are assassins, the supposed hero shows a remarkable lack of conscience when introduced to his - ahem - destiny and there's a huge implied body-count which is barely even acknowledged. At one point a train full of passengers falls into a gorge and the general attitude of the movie is all that death doesn't matter because the hero survived. The violence is bloody and in places it's a bit too much for my taste. Some of the language isn't stuff I'd allow in my living room, either.
Now, all of that said, I want to tell you why I think this is one of the best movies I've seen this year, in spite of all those very real flaws.
James McAvoy plays Wesley Gibson, an accountant in some unspecified huge firm who suffers from panic attacks and hates his life...but not enough to get off his ass and do anything about it. The highlight of his day is googling his own name and getting no hits. He doesn't really have a crappy life; it's just an average-Joe life with no real excitement in it. The problem is he's an utter doormat. He complains in voiceover that his nagging girlfriend is screwing his (apparently) best friend but he does nothing about it. He's on meds for his panic attacks, but (again, apparently) isn't in any kind of therapy. Loser.
Until one day Angelina Jolie shows up while he's filling his prescription and informs him that the father who abandoned him as a baby has just been killed and the man who killed him is now after the son. Cue supermarket shoot-out followed by spectacular car-chase as said killer shows up right on time.
Wesley is then introduced to "The Fraternity", a league of assassins which included his dead father. He is informed that he is destined to be one of them, that what he thinks are panic attacks are in fact a genetic gift which will allow him to become just as good at killing people as the rest of them. To prove it, he is given a gun and told to shoot the wings off a fly.
Now, this is where the film really started to get my interest. Partly, I admit, because I started drawing parallels with Sentinel: here we have this guy who has a genetic gift he can't control, he has no real idea where it comes from, and because he can't control it, it's screwing up his life. What's this "gift"? Essentially, when he gets an adrenaline rush, he really gets an adrenaline rush, like 500 times more powerful than a normal person. So his senses go into hyper-awareness (it's not Sentinel-type super-senses but more that he notices more of what he can see and hear), his time sense slows to a crawl, he's faster and presumably stronger and so on. (Okay, so the pseudo-science is even more shaky than usual in the movies. I don't care.) But though this has been happening to him for years, he's never known what it is. When it's happened to him in his Joe-Normal life, it scared the shit out of him, leading to his belief that it's a panic attack. So he's on meds he doesn't need and of course he feels the rest of his life spinning out of control, which in turn makes the initial problem worse.
So I don't find it surprising that when someone comes along with an explanation for this, and with a promise he can learn to control it and even turn it into an advantage, that Wesley goes for it. Even though he's aware of what he's getting into - a killers' club - of course he's going to try. And just to sweeten the pot, he's told that only he can avenge the murder of his father...though given that he's never even seen his father I'm not too sure why he cares about that part.
His training is pretty brutal and again, parts of it go a tad too far with the pseudo science. I really loved the House-of-Wax-super-healing-hot-spa...but not in a good way :-) This leads up to the film's set-piece trick which is that these assassins can make a bullet fly in a curve to hit a target. Oddly, this is the one piece of pseudo-science that doesn't bug me, because I don't really see why it shouldn't be possible. I mean, projectile weapons all operate on a curve - a parabola - because of gravity and other forces. Bullets, too: they just fly so fast and with such force that it might as well be a straight line. So it's not a huge stretch for me that maybe with the right bullet design and so on, it could happen. Sorta. Maybe not the way it's shown in this film, but still.
I won't give away the rest of the plot except to say that if you're scared of rats you should probably give this one a miss as there's a scene near the end with a lot of them. The plot follows fairly predictable and increasingly preposterous lines, with a twist most viewers will see coming quite early on.
There are two things that raise this film up from the average action-movie fayre.
First is the cast. This movie has a cast of actors not movie stars. Oh, there are stars in it - gotta have them to open a film. Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman certainly qualify. But both of them are stars who actually can turn in a better than average performance. And the rest of the cast: James McAvoy, Thomas Kretschmann (he was the ship captain in Peter Jackson's King Kong), Marc Warren (who played Teatime in Sky's The Hogfather) and so on. It means that the performances have more layers than your average shoot-em-up movie. Though the movie can't quite decide which it wants to be, it's possible to find a quite serious and meaningful plot struggling to get out from behind the action set pieces. It could have been better. It would have been nice to see Wesley struggle with the morality of what he's doing. His attitude is a bit too...um...I think the word I want is "immature". But it's at least consistent characterisation - he lets everyone walk all over him in his sucky normal life; turning into a superman doesn't dispel that tendency.
The second thing is the direction. Most movies, I don't even notice the direction, and I guess that's the way it should be. But this one...Timur Bekmambetov is a director to watch. Most action movie directors can't handle emotional scenes and a lot of directors who do angsty or romantic movies don't have much imagination with the action sequences. This director smoothly changes his style to suit the scene and he really understands what works. Scenes like Wesley's first introduction to "The Fraternity" are slow-paced, lighting and camera angles really getting into the character's confusion. The action sequences and special effects owe a lot to The Matrix movies (especially the bullet-effects, which are stunning), but I think the use of effects here outclass the Wachowskis. Bekmambetov's choices of colour and camera work really suck you into the action. He uses some fantastic camera angles that make it feel almost as if you're in there with the action. Some people who are really sensitive to it might get a bit travel sick, I guess, but it's not Blair Witch style camera-shake but something more polished. I thought it was fantastic. In fact, I really want to see what this director could do with the new 3D technology that's just coming into cinemas. I have a feeling it would be one hell of a ride.
In conclusion: There's a lot to complain about, but if you're a fan of OTT action movies, Wanted is unmissable. It's definitely on my must-buy list when it comes out on DVD but if you can I really recommend seeing it on the big screen.
Let's start with what's wrong with the film, because there is a lot wrong with it and I want to get that part out of the way.
If I've gotten the right impression from the various reviews and articles, Wanted is based on a very dark comic-book in which the super-villains have defeated all the super-heroes and taken over the world, which would at least make sense of the notion of a league of assassins being the good guys. However, this background is missing from the movie. Instead we have...well, "preposterous" is the kindest word for the plot. A thousand-year-old secret society of assassins formed from a league of cloth weavers, who take their orders from "the Loom of Fate" (no, I'm not making that up!). It's as if someone figured the comic-book plot would be too much for mainstream audiences, but didn't realise they were replacing it with something even Dan Brown would agree strains credulity just a wee bit. But what the hell, right?
It's also an extremely violent and misogynistic film. The latter is probably not surprising for an action movie, especially one based on a comic ('cause we all know what a bastion of gender equality the comics industry is, right?) but it must be said anyway. The movie offers three examples of womanhood: the fat-bitch-boss who bullies everyone to hide her own low self-esteem and apparently has a stapler fetish; the sleazy girlfriend who complains and nags and cheats; and then there's Angelina Jolie's character, Fox. Fox, though there's some attempt to make her sympathetic, is still essentially a sociopathic sex-kitten. Real bad score there. I'll admit that the men don't come off much better, though. None of the characters are truly likeable.
The moral centre of the film is...well, missing. The core characters are assassins, the supposed hero shows a remarkable lack of conscience when introduced to his - ahem - destiny and there's a huge implied body-count which is barely even acknowledged. At one point a train full of passengers falls into a gorge and the general attitude of the movie is all that death doesn't matter because the hero survived. The violence is bloody and in places it's a bit too much for my taste. Some of the language isn't stuff I'd allow in my living room, either.
Now, all of that said, I want to tell you why I think this is one of the best movies I've seen this year, in spite of all those very real flaws.
James McAvoy plays Wesley Gibson, an accountant in some unspecified huge firm who suffers from panic attacks and hates his life...but not enough to get off his ass and do anything about it. The highlight of his day is googling his own name and getting no hits. He doesn't really have a crappy life; it's just an average-Joe life with no real excitement in it. The problem is he's an utter doormat. He complains in voiceover that his nagging girlfriend is screwing his (apparently) best friend but he does nothing about it. He's on meds for his panic attacks, but (again, apparently) isn't in any kind of therapy. Loser.
Until one day Angelina Jolie shows up while he's filling his prescription and informs him that the father who abandoned him as a baby has just been killed and the man who killed him is now after the son. Cue supermarket shoot-out followed by spectacular car-chase as said killer shows up right on time.
Wesley is then introduced to "The Fraternity", a league of assassins which included his dead father. He is informed that he is destined to be one of them, that what he thinks are panic attacks are in fact a genetic gift which will allow him to become just as good at killing people as the rest of them. To prove it, he is given a gun and told to shoot the wings off a fly.
Now, this is where the film really started to get my interest. Partly, I admit, because I started drawing parallels with Sentinel: here we have this guy who has a genetic gift he can't control, he has no real idea where it comes from, and because he can't control it, it's screwing up his life. What's this "gift"? Essentially, when he gets an adrenaline rush, he really gets an adrenaline rush, like 500 times more powerful than a normal person. So his senses go into hyper-awareness (it's not Sentinel-type super-senses but more that he notices more of what he can see and hear), his time sense slows to a crawl, he's faster and presumably stronger and so on. (Okay, so the pseudo-science is even more shaky than usual in the movies. I don't care.) But though this has been happening to him for years, he's never known what it is. When it's happened to him in his Joe-Normal life, it scared the shit out of him, leading to his belief that it's a panic attack. So he's on meds he doesn't need and of course he feels the rest of his life spinning out of control, which in turn makes the initial problem worse.
So I don't find it surprising that when someone comes along with an explanation for this, and with a promise he can learn to control it and even turn it into an advantage, that Wesley goes for it. Even though he's aware of what he's getting into - a killers' club - of course he's going to try. And just to sweeten the pot, he's told that only he can avenge the murder of his father...though given that he's never even seen his father I'm not too sure why he cares about that part.
His training is pretty brutal and again, parts of it go a tad too far with the pseudo science. I really loved the House-of-Wax-super-healing-hot-spa...but not in a good way :-) This leads up to the film's set-piece trick which is that these assassins can make a bullet fly in a curve to hit a target. Oddly, this is the one piece of pseudo-science that doesn't bug me, because I don't really see why it shouldn't be possible. I mean, projectile weapons all operate on a curve - a parabola - because of gravity and other forces. Bullets, too: they just fly so fast and with such force that it might as well be a straight line. So it's not a huge stretch for me that maybe with the right bullet design and so on, it could happen. Sorta. Maybe not the way it's shown in this film, but still.
I won't give away the rest of the plot except to say that if you're scared of rats you should probably give this one a miss as there's a scene near the end with a lot of them. The plot follows fairly predictable and increasingly preposterous lines, with a twist most viewers will see coming quite early on.
There are two things that raise this film up from the average action-movie fayre.
First is the cast. This movie has a cast of actors not movie stars. Oh, there are stars in it - gotta have them to open a film. Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman certainly qualify. But both of them are stars who actually can turn in a better than average performance. And the rest of the cast: James McAvoy, Thomas Kretschmann (he was the ship captain in Peter Jackson's King Kong), Marc Warren (who played Teatime in Sky's The Hogfather) and so on. It means that the performances have more layers than your average shoot-em-up movie. Though the movie can't quite decide which it wants to be, it's possible to find a quite serious and meaningful plot struggling to get out from behind the action set pieces. It could have been better. It would have been nice to see Wesley struggle with the morality of what he's doing. His attitude is a bit too...um...I think the word I want is "immature". But it's at least consistent characterisation - he lets everyone walk all over him in his sucky normal life; turning into a superman doesn't dispel that tendency.
The second thing is the direction. Most movies, I don't even notice the direction, and I guess that's the way it should be. But this one...Timur Bekmambetov is a director to watch. Most action movie directors can't handle emotional scenes and a lot of directors who do angsty or romantic movies don't have much imagination with the action sequences. This director smoothly changes his style to suit the scene and he really understands what works. Scenes like Wesley's first introduction to "The Fraternity" are slow-paced, lighting and camera angles really getting into the character's confusion. The action sequences and special effects owe a lot to The Matrix movies (especially the bullet-effects, which are stunning), but I think the use of effects here outclass the Wachowskis. Bekmambetov's choices of colour and camera work really suck you into the action. He uses some fantastic camera angles that make it feel almost as if you're in there with the action. Some people who are really sensitive to it might get a bit travel sick, I guess, but it's not Blair Witch style camera-shake but something more polished. I thought it was fantastic. In fact, I really want to see what this director could do with the new 3D technology that's just coming into cinemas. I have a feeling it would be one hell of a ride.
In conclusion: There's a lot to complain about, but if you're a fan of OTT action movies, Wanted is unmissable. It's definitely on my must-buy list when it comes out on DVD but if you can I really recommend seeing it on the big screen.