Serviceable, yet soulless, action flick, oddly devoid of a sense of wonder.

Rating: 5/10 (25 June 2008)

Very loosely based upon Mark Millar's comic book miniseries of the same name, Wanted is the story of a white collar office worker who discovers he is actually the son of the world's greatest assassin and sets out to avenge his fathers death with a secret fraternity of assassins who choose their targets from 'The Loom Of Fate.' Yes, seriously, 'The Loom Of Fate'.
Awkwardly pitched somewhere between 'Matrix' and 'Fight Club' (without the sense of wonder of the former or the intelligence of the latter) and directed by Timur Bekmambetov, best known for 2004's Night Watch, Wanted is difficult to judge as a film. It's oddly soulless, inflicted by an over reliance on CGI and A.D.D. direction that seems to infect the majority of modern action films, yet it does have some very good set pieces and a reasonable involving storyline, though the dialogue itself is a bit of a mess and the characters are never explored to their full potential.
James McAvoy, one of the better actors to break through over the last few years, gives a decent performance as the film's protagonist Wesley Gibson, (ignoring his horrific attempt at an American accent) though the support, including a sleepwalking Morgan Freeman as Fraternity leader 'Sloan' and a 'going-through-the-motions' Angelina Jolie, is less successful.
Overall, Wanted doesn't fulfil it's promise (which it may have done had it stuck closer to Millar's original work) but is a serviceable enough summer action film and there's certainly worse ways to spend 2 hours in the evening. Just don't expect anything to make you beg for a sequel (though there's one on the way, natch.)