Review

Review Date: 6-July-08
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Wanted (2008)

Well, phooey.

I began to harbor hopes for Wanted during the first half hour when it was apparently shaping up to be a more violent relative of Fight Club. Its story springs from the notion that desperate times call for desperate measures, where desperate times are defined by the impotent irrelevance of the modern male. Wanted even features James McAvoy, the rising Scottish star who is as intense and sexy as Edward Norton and about the same age Norton was when he filmed his paean to busting loose. Fight Club got messy towards the end in an out-there, what-the-hell way that reflected the hero's mental state. Wanted gets messy around the middle in a way that suggests a sloppy filmmaker working from a first draft.

McAvoy's character, Wesley Gibson, is a Chicago nebbish who takes shit from just about everybody: his bitchy boss, his cheating girlfriend, his slimy pal, and life itself, which robbed him of his father just days after his birth. Wesley lives in a fog of repression and barely controlled anxiety until one day a mysterious woman (Angelina Jolie) approaches him in a drug store and starts a shooting match with man whom she claims is trying to kill him. After their high-octane getaway the woman, aptly named Fox, introduces Wesley to a society of assassins run by Morgan Freeman. Wesley learns that his father belonged to this society until his own assassination a few days ago, and that everybody expects him to avenge the loss. He agrees to undergo a brutal training which transforms him by allowing him to shed his wimpiness and "grow a pair."

Because vagueness sometimes passes for cool, or because somebody anticipated a sequel, it is never made clear where the society gets its orders to kill. They receive them, believe it or not, encoded in bolts of cloth coming off a sacred loom. Nor is it clear why the killers should feel their work is just, and this gets them into trouble. As Wesley pursues vengeance both he and the movie become tangled in conflicting impulses. Whom should Wesley trust, his target or his handlers? Where will Fox place her loyalty, with humans or with habit? What is more important, continuity or nonstop action? As with many movies that tout gunplay as fun, the clichés increase along with the decibel level. It is a poor showdown that cannot capitalize on the mystique of a foreign train, and an uninspired director (Night Watch hotshot Timur Bekmambetov) who relies on the same repeated images and improbable timing for effect. Wanted wants to rouse the trampled id within, at least temporarily, but it only gives us a few pokes before letting us return to a stupor.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.