who's pathetic and ordinary?

Rating: 3/10 (26 July 2008)

Not only do the elemental, natural laws benefit us physically, they also benefit us dramatically: when a character jumps from a skyscraper, for instance, we know that he must fall. If the rules suddenly don't apply, we can't be surprised and delighted by the bending of them, because there are no rules to be bent. In ways both literal and figurative, the laws of nature keep our feet on the ground.
Sometimes, as in The Matrix, the rules are cleverly rewritten. In contemporary action films, they're more often just ignored. I'm as willing to suspend my disbelief as the next moviegoer, but a few too many jumps from one skyscraper to another and I can bring myself to do little more than shrug. If these assassins can perform such feats of magic, why are they limited to knives and bullets?
I can hear its defenders: "It's only eye-candy." If only. When the main character looks at the camera and tells me I'm a worthless human being, I take exception, and so should you. This is no Tyler Durden inside an everyman, it's a vapid action movie lecturing me about the purpose of my life. Rarely has a movie so explicitly held its audience in contempt.
I'd be angrier if I thought Wanted had a clear, cogent thought in its head. Since it is dedicated only to the aesthetic of Cool, it doesn't; the final measure leaves the viewer unable to account for what he has seen, except to remark that it was sporting of the filmmakers to attempt to show him things he hasn't seen before. Like exploding rodents and the use of a human head as a gun silencer.
But it isn't quite accurate to say that Wanted has a, um, wanton disregard for life because it disregards lots of things, including simple logic and the laws of physics. Wanted dispenses with anything that stands in the way of turbo-charged cinematic action. I suppose that's entertainment to some; to me, it's identical to every other testosterone-driven mediocrity that coats the screens. *This* is what is truly pathetic and ordinary.