A hyper-violent thrill ride (in a good way)

Rating: 7/10 (2 July 2008)

Wesley Gibson (played by James McAvoy) has been beat down by life at the ripe old age of 26. He hates his job, he hates his boss and when he catches his girlfriend cheating on him with his best friend, he doesn't even have the nerve to stand up for himself. So imagine his surprise when it turns out that his long lost father is a super-powered member of a secret guild for assassins and Wesley has inherited his powers. Wesley is so adept with weapons that not only can he (literally) shoot the wings off of flies; he can do it on his first attempt.
It's at this point that Wesley meets up with Fox (played by Angelina Jolie). She introduces him to a world where the rules no longer apply to him. He's above the law as long as he's a member of this assassin's guild called "The Fraternity." Wanted is based on a controversial comic of the same name written by Mark Millar. It will be hard to believe for those that see the movie without having read the comic book, but the film is actually toned down. "The Fraternity" has their own code of ethics. They are doing what they feel is right and are unconcerned with and unapologetic for any collateral damage.
They train Wesley in the ways of their world: special baths that accelerate healing, the power to slow down their perception of time (thereby increasing their own reaction time) and the ability to bend the trajectory of bullets. And let's be honest, it looks pretty damn cool. Tooling around Chicago in Dodge Viper, killing bad guys and using Angelina Jolie to make your ex-girlfriend jealous makes for a fun Friday night in my book.
"The Fraternity" teaches Wesley an odd mixture of slavish devotion to the group, fate and sense of elitism masquerading as individuality. Think of it as Fight Club meets The Matrix by way of Ayn Rand. Eventually, "The Fraternity's" true nature is exposed and Wesley is forced to choose between those three things. He chooses individuality and takes on "The Fraternity" single-handedly in a final showdown. I apologize if you consider that a spoiler, but that's pretty much the standard story arc of movies like this, so I don't feel it's to terribly revealing. Wanted, at its core, is an adolescent revenge fantasy. But it's a slickly made one.
James McAvoy is an inspired choice as Wesley, a much harder role than it would appear. Wesley needs to be convincing as both a put-upon office drone AND as tough-guy super-assassin. McAvoy deftly handles both ends of that spectrum, and also manages the transition between the two.
It would be easy to say that Angelina Jolie is wasted as she has very little dialogue. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Apparently she personally cut many of her own lines in an effort to make the character of Fox more mysterious. Mission accomplished. She conveys so much through her silent reactions that when she does choose to speak (and trust me, when Fox speaks it's because she chooses to) it carries a much a greater weight.
Morgan Freeman (in a role clearly intended for Samuel L. Jackson) plays Sloan, leader of "The Fraternity". What can you say about Morgan Freeman? He couldn't turn in a bad performance if he wanted to. He was suitably "Morgan Freeman-y". (Yeah, that's a word now.) The actions scenes ooze cool but the movie needs a very large suspension of disbelief. If you go into this movie wanting to say things like, "That could never happen," you will have no shortage of opportunities. If you can't allow yourself to get caught up in the movie's universe, it will all just seem silly and vapid.
Wanted is a hyper-violent, nihilistic thrill ride that is bound to offend as many as it exhilarates. But it worked for me.
On a scale of 1 to 10, with The Matrix being 10 and Johnny Mnemonic being a 1, Wanted gets a 7.