Dumb fun

Rating: 7/10 (25 June 2008)

Based on comics by Mark Millar and JG Jones which I had never heard of, Wanted tells of a put-upon wimp (James McAvoy) who discovers that he is the son of a member of a league of assassins called The Fraternity who can do such amazing things as shooting bullets round corners. In very short order he is trained up by fellow assassin Angelina Jolie, on the instructions of Fraternity head Morgan Freeman, to pursue and kill the man who killed his father. This involves various savage beatings for reasons which are never wholly clear, and some trainee junior level assassinations based on targets identified from binary characters coded into fabric woven by an automatic loom which has been functioning for 1,000 years since The Fraternity was a Guild of Weavers. I think - that bit didn't make a vast amount of sense.
Let's be honest, the whole thing didn't make a whole lot of sense. But maybe it wasn't meant to. Maybe it was meant to be a vehicle for the several eye-popping Matrix-style action set pieces. Put brain on hold and accept the improbable elements as they come along, and you'll like it just fine.
Morgan Freeman does his elder statesman bit, Angelina Jolie does a variation on Lara Croft, Terence Stamp pops in momentarily as zoned out as usual, and James McAvoy proves that he can hold centre stage in an action movie as convincingly as everything else he does.
The action is great, and there are some laughs too. It's not a classic - it's far too dumb for that - but it's a perfectly satisfactory popcorn movie.