Wanted Review (major spoilers)

I’ve just come back from watching Wanted. I thought this one was best left for DVD but Sameer wanted to see it quite badly so I came along for the ride. Well, as far as a star rating goes, I’d give this one a 2 out of 5. Not as bad as The Happening but not as good as say, as Steven Seagal movie.

Here’s the synopsis. (Skip this bit if you don’t want to be utterly spoiled.)

• Introduce pathetic protagonist
• Kill random dude
• Attempt killing on pathetic protagonist
• Rescue protagonist
• Kick the shit out of protagonist
• Kick the shit out of protagonist again
• Ditto above
• Protagonist kicks shit out of others
• Insert random plot point/backstory
  
• Throw in a Darth Vader “I am your father” twist
• Kill father
• Insert awesome fight scene
• Kill everyone else
• End on “to be continued” moment
  

The plot of this movie is generally unimportant. It starts of at a steady clop and then droops in the middle with too much gratuitous violence that goes nowhere and adds little to the story.

As far as action is concerned, Wanted doesn’t bring anything new to the screen that we haven’t already seen in the Matrix, and it doesn’t do it nearly half as well. There is one decent fight scene but it’s vaguely reminiscent of the gun kata in Christian Bale’s Equilibrium.

The acting was only so so. James McAvoy was alright as the wide-eyed accountant turned assassin but his narration at the beginning and end of the movie seemed overdone. And then there’s Angelina Jolie, who’s really the face of this movie. Admittedly, she is smoking hot but for an actress who’s won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild awards, she is surprisingly wooden and irrelevant. When did she become nothing more than the generic cypher for “sex”?

And then are my other minor irritations with the movie — poor sound effects, a confused score that doesn’t work well, and camera work that shakes and jars so badly at times that you can barely even see the intricate hand to hand fight scenes that you should be marveling at. (Very Chronicles of Riddick.)

Wanted succeeds in only one thing — pleasing the target audience of 15 year old boys. Most other people will be sorely disappointed with it.