Wanted: Stylish, Derivative, and Hollow.

Rating: 5/10 (28 June 2008)

After seeing James McAvoy in Last King of Scotland, and Atonement, it was certainly jarring to hear his "American" accent. And this wouldn't be the only thing jarring about the movie. It earns its R rating easily by being very violent, perhaps irredeemably violent. I have nothing against violence in movies either, but I don't go to movies for the violence, I go for involving story, and Wanted for all its cool camera work and follow the bullet imagery just didn't grab me. The action is topnotch, but unlike the Bourne movies not set in reality, which should be cool but is less then expected, and Wanted certainly doesn't have the emotional resonance of those movies either. The chase in Bourne Ultimatum on the roof tops, playing cat and mouse, then the fight to the death; Wanted being rated R doesn't have anything as suspenseful or intense.
Finally for all I respect McAvoy as an actor I didn't enjoy him in this. His character is a whiny wimp,who's transformed into a elite skilled assassin. His scared act is played for laughs,for me it was just annoying. And the journey from wimp to badass really has been done better in movies that Wanted uses for inspiration: Fight Club, the Matrix seem to be quoted freely both as ideas and visually. I was ready to be blown away by this and just felt the director has the technical chops, and a very capable cast, but the script was just derivative, it gave the actors little material to really bite into, making them into movable pieces in the action scenes. This makes me appreciate something like what Tarantino is able to accomplish in grade A superior action junk food like Kill Bill. Wanted is getting decent reviews, but for me it was a disappointment.