Wanted to be Able to Believe It

Rating: 6/10 (3 July 2008)

I admit that, after seeing only one preview on TV, I was pretty excited for this movie. My friends saw it before me, one of them reluctantly, and then proceeded to harass me for a full week to go and see it as well, as soon as possible. They'd never done that before, so I thought the film must be phenomenal.
It's really not.
If I were to pitch this film, I would say it's Shoot 'Em Up meets The Matrix, but with all the corny ridiculousness of the first and none of the unique possibilities possessed by the latter. Wanted tries to to outdo every action film in existence, but it tries too hard. I enjoyed some of the action; the bending bullets, knifeplay, and over-the-top car chases in particular were all very entertaining and unique. But mixed with the needless blood and seemingly endless cascade of slow motion hold ups, I found myself yawning and shifting uncomfortably in my seat.
The language, too, seemed only to be there to make it especially crude. The main character's boss curses so much I'm surprised no one's reported her.
There's caricatures, stereotypes, violence, blood, and language galore, but that isn't what got to me. I'm a huge fan of graphic novels and some of their movie adaptations, but a good one this was not. It might have been, had the writers put in a little more effort, but as it is, I found myself almost lazily catching the "light" foreshadowed hints and predicting every plot twist well before you were finally flung around the bend.
The plot itself is much too reminiscent of The Matrix and Star Wars, with even a little Boondock Saints thrown in, but while all of those films had a unique message to deliver, this one did not. It seemed to want to try and teach you something about yourself, very much like Fight Club, but without any real connection between the audience and the character being flung around on screen.
And then there was The Loom Of Fate. Er. All of the assassins ended up listening to a contraption so ridiculous that I found myself struggling not to roll my eyes, instead of the grand underground anti-political Free Mason-esquire society they could have been. If there'd been other fantastic elements to the film, then sure, maybe I could have accepted that as it was, but to throw in something so completely unrealistic into an otherwise normal and mundane world was a bad move. They didn't even link it to the Threads of Fate found in Greek legend, which I was sure, even after hearing their weak attempt at an explanation, it must have been based off of. Without any type of real mythological or legendary history, the audience was asked to dumbly believe that this ancient, ultra-cool band of seasoned, hardened warriors, the doomed dregs of mankind who are forced to suffer and kill so that the rest of us can live free, take their orders from a magical, all-knowing thread-spinner, and that this is perfectly normal, logical, and rational. The fact that they formed 1000 years ago because they deciphered a language that didn't exist until a few decades ago doesn't seem to matter in the least.
The characters, too, were lacking. James McAvoy's Scottish accent crept out every now and then, and he literally went from sniveling paper-pusher to raging rebel in the span of a few minutes. Angelina Jolie looked the part, but her history was, ultimately, cliché and unsatisfying. No one showed enough personality or revealed enough history for you to really care about what happened to them by the end. I'm of the opinion that, if they'd have cut some of the slow-mo and lengthened gunshot scenes and focused instead on character development and interaction, it could have been really great.
Looking back on it from the perspective of a graphic novel, I find I can swallow a bit more of the unreal atmosphere, but they should have marketed it like that instead of proclaiming it to be a hot action flick. The Bourne Identity and The Matrix are regarded as masterpieces because they brought something new to the table while simultaneously maintaining a coherent, believable, intriguing storyline and characters. Spiderman, Batman, Superman, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man...the unrealistic nature of these films is automatically swept aside by the knowledge that they're based on comic books, and are therefore supposed to be overly dramatic and filled with stereotypical characters, language, and action sequences; they're what make up the entire genre. Wanted fell short because it pretended to be a real boy instead of the comical, overcinematized comic book adaptation that it was.
Good for some mindless action and crazy-bullet fun, but useless if you're looking for anything more intellectual than, as I've already mentioned, Shoot 'Em Up. I would recommend Equilibrium if you're looking for another "open your eyes" analysis of human nature, human suffering, or human discontent. It's slower, but the story is there alongside and complimenting the action, which is the one thing Wanted really failed to fuse.
Unless Wanted was supposed to be an over-the-top farce of the entire Matrix/Fight Club genre. Then I would say that, if you can keep yourself from trying to take anything in it seriously, it succeeds.