Nowhere near as good as it could have been - 64%

Rating: 6/10 (3 April 2012)

Haven't the Wachowski brothers got a lot to answer for? It seems that hardly a day goes by without another new action movie appears, created on a computer using footage shot in front of a green screen in a warehouse somewhere instead of using actors on location. And blow me, as if to illustrate my point, here is another one! Chock-full of all the ridiculous action you associate with CG-infused action flicks, this is one film that doesn't look too good if you peel away the pixels and gawk at what's left.
Wesley Gibson (a miscast James McAvoy) is a bored, weedy office worker who feels trapped in his dull and repetitive life. But before he can scoop up another handful of anti-anxiety pills, he bumps into the oddly-named Fox (Angelina Jolie) who throws him headfirst into a bullet-fuelled adventure. It turns out that Wesley is the son of a super-assassin, a member of a secret society called the Fraternity, who recruit Wesley in order to hunt his father's killer - a rogue member called Cross (Thomas Kretschmann). As Wesley's skills improve under the tutelage of Fox, the Fraternity's leader Sloan (Morgan Freeman) monitors the situation closely as Cross's personal crusade against the Fraternity threatens the organisation's very existence.
It sounds like it should have been an absolute winner but "Wanted" is the architect of its own demise. For example, I can go with the concept of the Fraternity and its thousand years' worth of assassination to "maintain stability in an unstable world". But why do the victim's names appear in weaving from the Loom of Destiny or whatever the damn thing was called? How did they appear before weaving was invented and why did it change to secret messages in textiles and why hadn't they updated it to something more 21st century? Never mind, the pretty CG provides enough distraction to stop you from looking into the plot too deeply while Jolie does her bit by pouting endlessly and occasionally flashing the flesh. As for McAvoy, he is not the sort of actor for this role - the first half of the film is spent whining and screaming a lot then when he realises he's actually a bad-ass, the abs come out and he can't go anywhere without a faintly silly grimace and a gun in each hand. The action, where it comes come, is certainly exciting but only possible in the mind of someone thinking in CG - vehicles don't behave the way they do here and I refuse to accept that you can make bullets go around corners by flicking your wrist when pulling the trigger. Nothing in this movie feels believable - granted, do any of these action films have the faintest whiff of reality to them any more - but when something is so fantastic and so "garnly", it stops being exciting and starts being stupid. Remember when you were a kid, racing your toy cars around the living room and crashing them into stuff? If you still do that then welcome to your dream film!
There are things to commend, however - the CG, while dominating almost every scene, is well done and director Timur Bekmambetov has a terrific eye for the amount of bloody violence shown on screen and how best to shoot it. There is a certain amount of enjoyment to be had, especially when the plot twist arrives and the film really seems to kick into gear but I can't help feeling that "Wanted" is a massive disappointment, that it should have been a film to rival "The Matrix" - something "Wanted" desperately to be - but ends up as yet another wannabe. The reasons for the failure are quite simple: the wrong leading man, excessively silly action scenes and a plot with more holes in than Katie Price's range of knickers. What it needed was a bit more restraint, a brain to tell the inner-child that cars don't flip as easily as they do here and a brief shot of Jolie's wet butt shouldn't be the sole recommendation of a movie. Sadly, with "Wanted" that's exactly what you do get but unless your taste in movies hasn't evolved since the time of your early teenage years then you'll probably find other films more worthy of your time.