Half and Half for me, but at least it throws out most of the bullshit from the comic...

Rating: 5/10 (14 February 2015)

"Wanted" has a lot of cool action sequences and there are a lot of iconic moments in it, but the tone is uneven. If you're a fan of the comic book it was based on this is one of the least accurate adaptations I've ever seen. The film follows Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), a nobody loser. He has no money, no future or aspirations and worst of all, has no will to do anything about it. Everything changes when he crosses path with Fox (Angelina Jolie). She tells him that he is the son of one of the world's greatest assassins and that his panic attacks are actually his superhuman abilities trying to break out. Daddy's been murdered and only Wesley can avenge him. Leaving his cheating bitch of a girlfriend, his crummy job and the boss he hates behind, he begins training and prepares to take his revenge.
This movie is a mash up between an action movie so stupid that it revels in its idiocy and one that just tries way too hard to be cool. When it goes completely dumb is when it works. "Wanted" begins by throwing physics on the ground and shooting it eighteen times with a scene that I thought was pretty awesome. Moments like this where the picture says "yeah I know that makes no sense, but isn't it amazing?" are when it works. We've seen movies about leather-clad assassins. They're always being played up as ultra-cool killers that somehow never get hired to kill nice people. I say if you're going to make an unrealistic film about assassinations, go all the way and make it the most improbable movie ever. We've got people driving at ridiculous speeds, making cars flip into the air so they can shoot at their targets, people jumping on trains, shooting each other from miles away, shooting bullets with their bullets and a terrific gag where someone gets hit in the face with a keyboard that will have you cheering.
What doesn't work with the movie is that about 50% of the time it doesn't go all the way. This movie is rated R, there should be a scene where Wesley has just collected a big bounty on a criminal mastermind and he rewards himself with a weekend in Vegas where he drives nothing but solid gold limousines and pays two bikini babes to lick peanut butter off of each other. It should also have been much gorier than it is to capitalize on the "fun" aspect of butchering bad guys. Think of another film that's ridiculously violent to the point where it becomes hilarious like Paul Verhoven's "Robocop". That movie went all the way in satirizing violence; this one does it... half of the time. When it isn't a dumb, loud action movie, the story is still plenty ridiculous, but the movie doesn't want you to think it's absurd.
The Fraternity (the league of assassins that Wesley is recruited into) takes its orders from get this... a loom. Sloan (Morgan Freeman), interprets chunks of the tapestry it weaves and reads errors in the way the fibers are put together, translating it into binary code that gives the assassins their next targets' names. What?! The weave is always correct and if you don't go ahead with its orders, bad things will happen. What I wanted to see was Wesley realize that this whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. I wanted a revelation that all along these people were killing random strangers for no reason. He would have had to go all badass and take down his mentors because their next target was the Pope or something. That would have hit the perfect note.
I've always proclaimed that books and movies are very different forms of storytelling and those directors and scriptwriters should feel free to interpret the material differently to make it work for the screen, but "Wanted" takes it on a whole new level. The book and movie begin similarly, but then they couldn't be more different. There are no supervillains, no plots to destroy the world, no trips to other dimensions, no colorful costumes or massive conspiracies that allow our characters to do whatever they want. I understand why the character of Wesley was changed from an unlikeable anti-hero who kills people who annoy him in cold blood, has nothing but disdain for ordinary people and gleefully rapes women but why even call the film "Wanted" if it has maybe 15 minutes' worth of material in common? And of all of the elements you had to retain from the original material, why keep the final line from the book, where the protagonist we've been following insults the audience and berates them for not being as cool as a fictional character? It's not that "Wanted" is really that bad, in fact there are a lot of good moments, some of which are really iconic (including some of Morgan Freeman's lines towards the end, which are priceless). The problem with the film is that the target audience, fans of the book will be completely disappointed by the amount of changes made and it doesn't stand on its own very well either. I'm not a huge fan of the book, despite really enjoying the concept and seeing the great parts in it. I just couldn't get over the childish insults and self-hate the author had piled on top of the character I just couldn't cheer for at all. I was really hoping that this would be a chance for a third party to come in and fix all of the problems and make it a really cool film. When I realized that was not at all what I was going to get I was still disappointed that the film chickened out when it really mattered. Since the movie is about 50% awesome stupid action and 50% missteps, the best I can give it is a middle-of-the-road rating of 2,5 / 5. (On DVD, February 21, 2014)