somewhere between absurdity and reality

Rating: Null/10 (13 July 2008)

Like so many modern Hollywood moves "wanted" looks and sounds great but is a poorly conceived and written and is ultimately not a good movie. It's another in a long list of movies that is technically excellent but uninspired and unfulfilling.
What killed the film for me was that it was utterly ridiculous from top to bottom. From the opening scene you think you are watching something like the "Matrix" but the movie never gets around to explaining how these assassins attain superpowers. If I could train hard for a few months getting the sh*t beat out of me and bathing in krispy kreme sugar and somehow develop superpowers to defy all know laws of physics, I would get started right away. It wants to look and feel like reality, but unlike comic book movies like "Ironman", it asks you to swallow way more implausible nonsense than you may be able to stomach. In fact, "Ironman" looks like a documentary compared to this noisy, overdone "rollercoaster". I did not know going in that the movie was based on a comic about superheroes and supervillians. They should have committed more to that...there effort to make the movie "real" just made it a sloppy mess.
So it's a fantasy film that I found difficult to get into. The action is well done, the effects look great, but its another case where you are lucky not to have an epileptic fit by the first hour from all the flash cutting and gimmicks. Half the movie is in bullet time.
And then of course there is the loom, which is just a retarded concept and in the face of everything else, I found myself rolling my eyes. If they had spent half the time they spent on effects working on the story, we would all have been better off.
James McAvoy does his best with what he's given and its his performance that keeps the movie from slipping even further into the abyss. Jolie is always great but not given much to do here but look sexy... Evren Buyruk from USA