Movie Review: Wanted

I was mixed on seeing Wanted but had heard good thing from friends so I saw it. It's a cross between Fight Club and the Matrix and while dumb, it grabbed me and didn't let go. It doesn't take itself too seriously, that's apparent from the opening titles that explain that 1000 years ago a guild of weavers (yes weavers) formed a league of assassins. We then see an improbable, ok impossible, sniper shot after seeing someone perform Matrix style moves.

Wesley Gibson is in the Thomas Anderson role, the shlub with a crappy job and a girlfriend who's sleeping with his best friend. And he's the son of an assassin so he has a heart that beats abnormally fast and it lets him do these amazing things. Hey it makes sense when Angelina Jolie is explaining it. There is a plot, with several turns I didn't see coming, but it's all an excuse for the action sequences. They're really good, preposterous, but really good. Sure they defy the laws of physics but unlike most other action films, you can actually follow everything that's going. You might know you can't do that with a car, but when you see them turn the car sharply and it roll sideways over another car to end up the on the side of a bus, knocking it over so that it can drive off what's now the top of the bus, it all makes sense, because you just saw it all happen. There's lots of CSI style camera work and occasionally they play the scene again backwards just to make sure you see how it all goes together.

I was impressed with James McAvoy who I otherwise wouldn't have recognized from his previous roles in Atonement, The Last King of Scotland, and as Mr. Tumnus in Narnia. Jolie is fine, but her role is actually small. And she's so thin she doesn't look like she could lift the gun she's blowing you away with. Morgan Freeman plays the head of the guild and at times is channelling Samuel L. Jackson.

After the film you may have a conversation about how it would have been much easier for the guy to just leave a note on someone's doorstep rather than send a message in the way he did. Then again that might be the most minor of craziness you discuss. But you will discuss the action sequences with some glee. Ah summer.