The Pied Piper of Warp and Weft

Rating: Null/10 (6 July 2008)

Aka A Modest Yarn of Mixed Fabrication A warning; if you are a vegetarian, don't even think about going to see Wanted. Several scenes take place in a kind of meat store, and the large hanging chunks of meat are as vividly memorable as Angelina's tattoos.
I'm almost ashamed to admit that I rather enjoyed this piece of Friday Night Fluff. No, fluff is the wrong word. It's extremely violent in a cartoonish way, and not remotely fluffy; lots of lingering shots of bullets penetrating skin and the red stuff flying hither and thither. To call it light weight is paying it a compliment. It's so light weight it makes Ms Jolie look like a body builder. Wanted is watchable because it never takes itself too seriously. I spent the first ten minutes wondering if I should get up, go home and have an early night, then I grasped that it was a comic book, and went along for the reasonably entertaining ride. I should point out up front, that this film is aimed unapologetically at the 18-30 male demographic, with its lingering shots of Angelina's butt and mouth, and routinely obnoxious female characters (Ms Jolie excepted.) So we all know what we are getting with this one, OK?
James McAvoy plays Wesley Gibson, a rather weedy young man who works in a cubicle as some kind of customer service rep. His girl friend is bonking his best friend on his IKEA dining table (am I getting old or does that look really uncomfortable?) and his boss resembles a beached walrus with a bad hangover. One day, on a trip to the grocery store, someone starts shooting at him and, to cut a long story short, he discovers he is the son of a fabled assassin who belonged to an ancient order of assassins  The Fraternity - who masquerade as weavers but spend their off time taking out the world's nastiest people. Think of them as boy scouts with very large weapons; they are always prepared. And in order to prepare our Wesley to take his place amongst the splatterati, The Fraternity prepare him very well indeed by beating him up daily and dunking him in rejuvenating baths. As spa treatments go, this one is awesome; looks a bit like hot wax. Mmmmmmmmmmm!
Angeline Jolie as Fox is one of the top honchos, which has me wondering whether calling it a fraternity might not be a bit misleading? I guess calling it The Co-ed was a non starter? She plays this strictly tongue in cheek, and looks so underfed that I doubt she could raise one of the weapons to shoulder height, never mind wield it menacingly. Morgan Freeman plays the boss, Sloan. Every now and then the magic weaving machine spews forth the name of another victim, and that was about the place where I actually started giggling. How did Morgan Freeman manage to utter the words "Loom of Fate" with a straight face? This must be the kind of stuff they prepare you for in acting school, and all I can say is, I take my hat off to him.
After an encounter with Terence Stamp playing a monk (my but hasn't Stamp come a long way since Far from the Madding Crowd?), there is a fairly entertaining chase through a train, and a spectacular wreck in a deep gorge, and our hero Wesley finds out that his dad may not be who he thought and the goodies may be the baddies after all. The Loom of Fate has spewed his own name out, but he takes his revenge with a novel plague of explosive rats, who all become willing suicide rodents because they are high on peanut butter. Or some such equally ludicrous detail. Anyway, if James McAvoy was looking for something diametrically opposite to Atonement, I think he found it in Wanted. It's unlikely to get Oscar nominated, but I think I could actually sit through it one more time, just to hear Morgan Freeman say "Loom of Fate again. Classic!
(I was mildly interested in where they filmed this so I sat through the endless reel of credits to the very end. Just to put me out of my misery, can anyone tell me what a Libra Head Technician is? Do they have a head technician for every sign of the zodiac? Just curious)