Thankfully NOT the comic book... some minor spoilers

Rating: 9/10 (27 June 2008)

I read Wanted quite a while back having heard about it and seeing that I'm a comic book fan and collector I bought it and looked forward to a good read. Wow. It was the worst piece of junk ever laid to paper. Thank God they didn't faithfully adapt the book. The first half of the story was excellent, I loved Wesley Gibson's character, and then it started to quickly slid downhill with the introduction of ridiculous characters made of crap (literally), there's another idiotic character whose name I can't repeat here, a booger picking moron and costumed super hero battles in alternate universes. It was like the first half of the book was written by one person, and then the second half was written by another person who hadn't read the first part and just jumped in with whatever plot they felt like writing. Basically, Wanted the graphic novel was about an assassin brotherhood, but these assassins in the comic rape, pillage, and wantonly kill anyone they want. Period. Yawn.
Thankfully they changed the second half of the movie from the comic, nixed the super hero battles, moronic crap filled characters, booger picking anti-heros and costumes and went for something more realistic... if you called curved bullet and bullets smashing into one another realistic. But I can live with that, it's like a ultra-violent urban fantasy and it's absolutely fantastic. I ADORED this movie and I can't wait to see it again. Some people criticized the second act as the Fraternity (as the assassins call themselves) brings Wesley up to speed, but I enjoyed every minute. Yes, even the torture porn, as one reviewer called it, was cool. Third act, awesome. Never lets up. They even semi-kept the twist from the comic, but made it better. And yes, Wesley gets the last word even if it's not quite like the original story it's still funny.
To help gauge this review, I am not between the ages of 16-25 and I am female. I would not take my two young kids (10 and 13) to see this movie. It's a great adult fantasy.