The Summer Action Season Has Begun!

Rating: 8/10 (6 July 2008)

Full of nonstop action. Sexy. Impossible. WANTED is all these and shamelessly flaunts it. And with good reason: It's a popcorn flick. Summer is upon us and most movie-goers demand a few solid action films, and Wanted delivers.
We've seen this plot before. A nobody discovers that he/she is a somebody and develops their "abilities" thanks to the guidance of a super-dude/dudette. The nobody is cubicle-bound-anxiety-prone-loser Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy, ATONEMENT). Stuck in a dead-end job he constantly feels overwhelmed by his supervisor and must take anxiety medication to settle himself. Until one day he meets his dudette, the appropriately named Fox (Angelina Jolie, A MIGHTY HEART), who saves him from the deadly crosshairs of Cross (Thomas Kretschmann, KING KONG), an assassin gone rogue from within a group known as The Fraternity. Told initially by the leader of this group, a man named Sloan (Morgan Freeman, 10 ITEMS OR LESS), that The Fraternity is a group of "good" assassins who do fates bidding by getting their kill assignments from something known as "The Loom of Fate", Wesley (McAvoy) enters their ranks in roughshod fashion (being beaten, sliced, healed ...and then beaten and sliced again) to toughen him up for the job he must do.
His goal, though, is to kill the man who killed his previously unknown father (Cross being the assassin of Wesley's dad). But if turning a no-account accountant into a killer weren't enough, there's a not-so-subtle twist that many might see coming as they watch this bullet swerving action movie.
McAvoy is completely believable as the dweeb-infused office-boy-turned-gunslinger, making the premise of the film a joy. And watching the sexy Angelina Jolie whip out massive handguns and hit her targets nearly without fail is something that'll make your action-packed-weekend fun. She seems so comfortable doing impossible and ridiculous stunts that it makes them seem possible and plausible.
For those in the mood for a great shoot 'em up, this one's a winner.