Wanted
1.5 Waffles!

Wanted will be known for the special effects and action scenes (and the walking, talking special effect known as Angelina Jolie!), but did it have to get so stupid?


James McAvoy stars as Wesley Gibson – a humdrum guy stuck in an insignificant life, but he has untapped abilities that could be the key to a much more exciting, and dangerous path. While he has never known his father, Wesley’s Daddy worked with Fox (Angelina Jolie), and was part of a group of assassins known as The Fraternity. Now, The Fraternity’s leader, Sloan (Morgan Freeman), wants to recruit Wesley to avenge the father’s death.

Is Wesley up to the challenge?

Can he stop staring at Angelina Jolie’s sexy sexy body long enough to succeed in assassinating the man who killed his father?

Will Angelina Jolie get naked? (a little!)

Director Timur Bekmambetov does a good job giving Wanted the kind of action you expect from a big summer blockbuster including wild car chases, bullets bending and curving their way to their targets and trains plummeting off the tracks at death defying heights. However, most of this is action for action’s sake without much regard to developing a plot. Even worse, the best action can’t overcome some absolutely ridiculous dialogue, hackneyed overly obvious visuals and one of the worst story ideas I have ever seen in my life.

The three person writing team subjects us to a grating, whiny voiceover from McAvoy that makes you hate him instead of root for him as the underdog. Most of the characters are too cartoonish and goofy to be taken seriously. Bekmambetov constantly gives us visual flashes of signs and words that pop on the screen in a lame attempt to be smart and ironic, and Wanted has one of those story pieces that will blow you away with its idiocy.

Sloan may be telling all of the assassins who to target and rub out for the sake of humanity, but do you think it is based on research? Evidence of wrongdoing? Tips about nefarious plots? No. The Loom of Fate determines who must die.

I wish it was more metaphorical than that, but we are talking about a real, old fashioned cloth weaving loom that produces a coded hankerchief with the name of the target. It’s as if the creator of Wanted is so lazy he decided it’s too hard to come up with a real reason for each of these people to be marked for death (details and backstory are sooooo hard to fabricate), so we’ll just chalk it all up to the hanky!

Angelina Jolie is coolly sexy and awesome, but you already knew that. Freeman does his best as the authoritarian figure, but his character starts to become sillier by the minute as the story does the same. In the end, you get some good action, and not much else.

Wanted is rated R for strong bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and some sexuality.