WANTED! A Competent Movie Please

Rating: 3/10 (25 June 2008)

Hollywood's apparent fascination with Russian 'Nightwatch' helmer Timur Bekmambetov should (good box office notwithstanding) be efficiently assassinated by this stupid, boring, derivative, inept and mean-spirited mess.
James McAvoy plays Neo (sorry, Wesley) a shmucky everyman who, whilst shopping for his anxiety meds at a local pharmacy, bumps into Angelina Jolie a.k.a Trinity (or Fox, if you prefer) who joins him for a pointless special effects sequence en route to an introduction with Morpheus, played by Morgan Freeman, and who, for argument's sake, we'll refer to by the name he's given in the film: Sloane.
You get the idea. This is, put simply, the pauper's Matrix. It wouldn't make for particularly interesting reading for me to recount just how many similarities there are between the two films (it'd fill several hundred pages of double-sided A4, for a start) but the overall difference in tone is mildly fascinating.
It wasn't hard to empathize with Neo in the earlier film; the Wachowski brothers clearly relished and nurtured the sense of wonder and excitement of his journey, making the film's stratospherical success easy to understand. In Wanted, after taking a plot-unbalancing length of time to establish McAvoy as an ordinary joe who is, "...a loser. Just like you..." (a sentiment that the film keeps repeating) it then turns him, after his lengthy 'training' sessions (which amount to nothing more than him being repeatedly beaten, and no, I am not making this up) into an arrogant, belligerent a**hole.
The film pukes its cards on the table most succinctly with its final line of dialogue. After narrating his character's transformation for us over a sequence featuring yet another bloody, slow-motion head shot, McAvoy turns to the camera and says, "What the f**k have you done lately?" which, I'm happy to report, resulted in a smattering of mild applause at the screening I attended; not for the dialogue, but for the truly estimable chap who screamed "F**K OFF!!!" at the screen as the credits began to roll.
All of this wouldn't matter if the film was any good at all, but it ain't. The action sequences are murky and unimaginative. The actors are given absolutely nothing to do; Morgan Freeman, in particular, appears to be barely alive during his few brief scenes. Its derivative, its stupid, its condescending and its boring. Boy... is it boring!
This is the best approximation of a turkey that you're gonna see before Thanksgiving. Chow down at your own risk.