Although stupid, still a decent summer action flick- "kinda" wanted

Rating: 5/10 (9 August 2008)

First, let me say that I do like stupid fun action movies. I love them actually. A movie does not have to be brilliantly thought out to just be fun. Wanted is a fun movie, yet it makes even me wonder sometimes, "what the heck?" The acting is pretty good- Morgan Freeman, James McAvoy, and Angelina Jolie are all good as the main characters. Other than that, everyone is just average, but not worse than expected from this type of movie. Now while the actors might be good, the actual characters seemed meh. Especially the main character Wesley Gibson- actually, I'm not gonna lie. I had to look up his name when writing this, that's how much I thought his character was worth.
Not comparing this to the Matrix would be dumb, because they're similar movies. Average loser guy working in a cubicle, wants something else and gets it kinda. Like in the Matrix, Wesley goes through training and learning how everything works, only to become a major killer guy....yup that sounds right. Also put in excessive use of cg for just about everything. Plus gun shootout with main character, using two guns, shooting a whole bunch of idiots. Very imaginative.
The premise in itself is obviously absurd- curving bullets. But that's not a problem. That would be cool to do. What's boring and melodramatic is that every time a bullet is curved, everything is in slow mo. This is supposed to make you feel like the shooter (they learn to control their pulse to slow things down) yet it just gets annoying. I don't wanna see everything in slow mo. In fact, almost every action-y motion (such as a car flipping over) is in slow mo, which really dulls the whole thing down a lot. It's just not effective when something is used every two seconds, and in fact the movie could have been a little more fun without such heavy use of it.
Another thing is the blood. It's just unnecessary in this case to have so much. Blood does make you feel like "ooo that hurt", but who cares if you really don't care about the characters or anything happening? James McAvoy's character is attempting to kill his father's murderer, yet you never care!? There's just more and more absurdity that can't be accepted. If a movie is overall good, I can look over just about anything. But this movie was just decent to begin with, which only makes it worse when such ideas as the Loom of Fate (supposedly, hidden assassination needs are encoded in the Loom of Fate through mistakes in weaving- yeah...) come up. Also, if they can curve bullets around corners, why can't they sometimes even shoot at a guy right there straight ahead (it happens, believe me).
There's a decent twist around the beginning of the last third. But that's even not really super unpredictable. At the end, there's a little message from Wesley, who asks "What the f*** have you done lately?" Really? I think I wasted my time with a movie that could have been better. Is this supposed to make me have some sort of real look into my life, or just be stupid fun? Who knows...
Overall, I would recommend this movie to people who just like stupid fun. Also, it would probably great with some friends as a rental later on- that way you can laugh at it and enjoy it at the same time.