Angelina Jolie & this film: stylish and visually exciting

Rating: 7/10 (10 August 2008)

Java Man Reviews "Wanted" (Rated R). Directed by Timur Bekmambetov. Written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas & Chris Morgan based upon the comic books by Mark Millar & J. G. Jones. Starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Terence Stamp, Thomas Kretschmann, Common, Mark Warren & David Patrick O'Hara. Originally appeared in LakewoodBuzz.com August, 2008.
OVERVIEW:
The movie opens with a heart-pounding action sequence as Mr. X (O'Hara) tries to avoid assassination by crashing through a plate-glass window and leaping into the Chicago skyline. He lands on a nearby rooftop where he and Cross (Kretschmann) fight a gun battle with bullets that bend around corners. Just as Mr. X meets his end, wimpy office worker Wesley Gibson (McAvoy) vacates his cubicle in a nearby building and heads home to his dreary life. On the way, he runs into the aptly named Fox (Jolie) who tells him that Mr. X was his father and that Cross is a rogue operative of The Fraternity, a 1000-year-old network of assassins who kill "bad people." She tells Wesley that he has inherited secret powers and that he is destined to join The Fraternity and help them eliminate Cross.
Just when we begin to think that this is too absurd even for a movie based upon a comic book, Cross attacks the two of them and they escape in a car chase so intensely exciting that Wesley and the audience begin to buy into Fox's story... which gets even better. The Fraternity, headed by the brilliant Sloan (Freeman), is located in a textile factory where the fate of its victims is determined by the binary codes hidden in fabric patterns woven by the factory's looms. Wesley agrees to join, but first there is the initiation, conducted by a menacing assemblage with names like Repairman, Butcher and Exterminator.
REVIEW: 3 out of 4 Java Mugs:
There must be an easier way to take out a target than to squeeze out a shot while standing atop a speeding Chicago L-train as it races past the target's office window. But then, it wouldn't be as stylish. It's the same reason Hitchcock staged the attempted killing of Cary Grant with a crop duster in broad daylight instead of a gun in a dark alley... to avoid cliché and to create a memorable scene.
Russian director Bekmambetov creates many such scenes and never passes up a chance to add visual spice to a shot. There are slow motion bullets to follow in curving trajectories, reversing action to follow to its source, and Angelina Jolie (a tattooed visual effect unto herself) to follow anywhere. He even creates visual patterns to match the rhythm of Wesley's accelerating metabolism.
In addition to Jolie, who was born for this role, other performers operate well within the director's energized universe, especially veterans Freeman and Stamp as the organization's sinister brain trust. McAvoy, who at first seems miscast, convincingly grows into the role of the apprentice assassin.
The question remains, is the story credible? Of course not. Yet we are hooked into it just as the unwary victims are hooked into their destinies by the Loom of Fate.