Russian auteur vies with Zack Snyder for title...

Rating: 6/10 (25 March 2009)

...of king of the empty-headed eye-candy movies, but has to do it with a "Speed Racer" quality script. The results are kinetic but utterly forgettable. James "Atonement" McAvoy is an nerdish accountant ripped from his obnoxious life by Angelina "you have to ask?" Jolie and a bullet fired by a slumming Thomas "Stalingrad" Kretschmann. Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am, and McAvoy's an instinctual super-assassin charged with bringing his purported father's killer a steaming helping of tit-for-tat.
Jolie's got the tats (and the others), and otherwise respectable actors like Morgan "Driving Miss Daisy" Freeman and Terence "The Collector" Stamp take undoubtedly sumptuous paychecks enacting the slim comic-book plot, but it's all for naught. The visuals are fine and dandy, lots of whoo-hoo bullet trajectory shots and physically impossible stuntwork, and a pounding soundtrack and so on and so forth, and it all still comes to naught. The characters are cardboard cut-outs, the dialogue is "Fight Club" lite and even more pretentious; in short, everything is such a cartoon that it packs all the emotional wallop of a Looney Tune. That, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but in the case of "Wanted" it is. It's such an obvious stab at setting up a new franchise that it instantly deflates itself.
Time-killer viewing only, check brain at door. It gets a six from me strictly for the stylish visuals, and even then, just barely. Director Timur "Night/Day Watch" Bekmambetov is quite capable, but this dispensable junk was not really up to his standards. Watch at your own risk of boredom and ridicule.