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#199 - Wanted
Timur Bekmambetov, 2008
An unremarkable young office worker learns that he is the son of a gifted assassin and is inducted into his late father's organisation.
Wanted is yet another post-Matrix action film that emphasises style over substance to an especially glaring fault. This much is proved by the fact that its main twist on the very familiar "secret society of assassins" narrative is that the assassins are all genetically gifted with the ability to fire guns in such a way that they can send the bullets on a curve instead of in a straight line. A bit ridiculous, but surely the film knows how to have fun with such a premise? Sadly, that's not the case here. Wanted does attempt to show off a humourous side by establishing its protagonist (James McAvoy, one of several actors in this film that is better than material like this deserves) as a gutless wonder living an incredibly pitiful life. Dead-end office job, annoying co-workers, cheating girlfriend - it's like sitting through Office Space, only the jokes suck and make you wish this movie was trying to take itself more seriously so you might at least get an ironic chuckle out of it. Then, of course, the action kicks in courtesy of a mysterious assassin (Angelina Jolie, trying to be stoic yet seductive and somehow coming across as being as blandly disinterested in what's going on as I am) and then the bizarre mythology starts appearing (which is given plenty of smoothly-voiced exposition by none other than Morgan Freeman - not even he manages to sell this nonsense as he sleepwalks through the role).
Even if I were to sufficiently suspend my disbelief about the improbability of the action on offer, that doesn't make up for the fact that it's actually rather boring. Once you start throwing out the rules, it eventually becomes hard to find a reason to care about what's going on. Assassination targets are decided by the magic threads of an ancient loom, people take baths that can heal any injury, etc. It doesn't do anything to make these fancy bullet tricks really mean anything, even in the context of a cool action movie. We get it, these characters can curve their bullets. Show that happening in slow-motion a few dozen more times, I'm sure it'll stop being boring eventually. Even then, when the movie's not busy trying to justify its effects-heavy action sequences, it's playing out one of the most tiresome action plots ever. We once again get the "strong female character rescues loser male protagonist and trains him to be more badass than she is" cliché (which is rapidly becoming an annoying cliché even when it's used in movies I like - and also, there's a horribly forced romantic element to their relationship as well), an agonising training montage (both for the protagonist and the audience), a somewhat predictable second-act twist in order to railroad this movie towards a supposedly satisfactory conclusion when the very ending of the film seems to insult the audience in an attempt to be badass. I may watch my fair share of bad action movies, but Wanted is especially terrible in that regard. Good actors get miscast and wasted in a film that can't seem to make up its mind over how seriously it wants to take itself or even be taken by audiences. It can't even make its main selling point about physics-defying assassins interesting enough to even remotely compensate for its paper-thin plot. Derivative, shallow, and most of all...unwanted.
Timur Bekmambetov, 2008
An unremarkable young office worker learns that he is the son of a gifted assassin and is inducted into his late father's organisation.
Wanted is yet another post-Matrix action film that emphasises style over substance to an especially glaring fault. This much is proved by the fact that its main twist on the very familiar "secret society of assassins" narrative is that the assassins are all genetically gifted with the ability to fire guns in such a way that they can send the bullets on a curve instead of in a straight line. A bit ridiculous, but surely the film knows how to have fun with such a premise? Sadly, that's not the case here. Wanted does attempt to show off a humourous side by establishing its protagonist (James McAvoy, one of several actors in this film that is better than material like this deserves) as a gutless wonder living an incredibly pitiful life. Dead-end office job, annoying co-workers, cheating girlfriend - it's like sitting through Office Space, only the jokes suck and make you wish this movie was trying to take itself more seriously so you might at least get an ironic chuckle out of it. Then, of course, the action kicks in courtesy of a mysterious assassin (Angelina Jolie, trying to be stoic yet seductive and somehow coming across as being as blandly disinterested in what's going on as I am) and then the bizarre mythology starts appearing (which is given plenty of smoothly-voiced exposition by none other than Morgan Freeman - not even he manages to sell this nonsense as he sleepwalks through the role).
Even if I were to sufficiently suspend my disbelief about the improbability of the action on offer, that doesn't make up for the fact that it's actually rather boring. Once you start throwing out the rules, it eventually becomes hard to find a reason to care about what's going on. Assassination targets are decided by the magic threads of an ancient loom, people take baths that can heal any injury, etc. It doesn't do anything to make these fancy bullet tricks really mean anything, even in the context of a cool action movie. We get it, these characters can curve their bullets. Show that happening in slow-motion a few dozen more times, I'm sure it'll stop being boring eventually. Even then, when the movie's not busy trying to justify its effects-heavy action sequences, it's playing out one of the most tiresome action plots ever. We once again get the "strong female character rescues loser male protagonist and trains him to be more badass than she is" cliché (which is rapidly becoming an annoying cliché even when it's used in movies I like - and also, there's a horribly forced romantic element to their relationship as well), an agonising training montage (both for the protagonist and the audience), a somewhat predictable second-act twist in order to railroad this movie towards a supposedly satisfactory conclusion when the very ending of the film seems to insult the audience in an attempt to be badass. I may watch my fair share of bad action movies, but Wanted is especially terrible in that regard. Good actors get miscast and wasted in a film that can't seem to make up its mind over how seriously it wants to take itself or even be taken by audiences. It can't even make its main selling point about physics-defying assassins interesting enough to even remotely compensate for its paper-thin plot. Derivative, shallow, and most of all...unwanted.