Wanted tells the story of Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) a corporate loser that is set free from his boring existence when a woman going by the alias of "Fox" (Angelina Jolie) informs him that he is the son of the world's greatest assassin. Wesley quickly gives up on his chosen profession of keyboard monkey and turns to the world of professional killing instead. Fox takes Wesley to "The Fraternity" an organization of assassins lead by Sloan (Morgan Freeman) who tells Wesley that he and his group of murderers only kill bad people that are picked by reading the binary code contained in the fabric spit out by a mystical loom. After an hour's worth of the most boring training montages ever put to celluloid, Wesley is suddenly able to control the arc of bullets, run across speeding trains and survive bone shattering injuries by bathing in a pool of magic candle wax. But Wesley soon learns that Sloan may not be the good guy he pretends to be and suddenly nothing makes sense to him anymore, but that's probably due to his attempt to make sense of "Wanted's" underdeveloped script.
Wanted is an annoying movie on many levels, first and foremost is the fact that everyone in the film goes out of their way to look cool at all times. By trying so hard to be "bad ass" the entire cast just ends up looking like your Uncle trying on a System of a Down sweatshirt at the local Hot Topic while giving you the "double thumbs up" to remind you that he's the cool Uncle. Every "cool" moment in the film feels forced, by the second time that somebody shoots another person's bullet out of the air, the effect is completely mundane. Yet it occurs another ten or twelve times… in the same goddamn scene!!! The second most annoying thing about "Wanted" is that at least half of the film is shown in slow motion, the first fucking shot of the film is of a guy getting out of a cab …in slow mo!?!? I'm a big fan of director Timur Bekmambetov's prior films (Nightwatch and Daywatch) that gleefully rooted themselves in the style over substance category, but Wanted is just way too stylish to stomach. Every single action scene feels like you're watching somebody else playing "Grand Theft Auto 4," there isn't an ounce of originality present in the film and the coolness factor of slow motion aka "bullet time" action scenes dissolved after the first time I heard somebody mutter "Know Kung-Fu" at a VHS copy of Johnny Mnemonic.
The final straw of annoyance that broke this camel's back was the nonexistent plot or even an attempt to craft a cohesive storyline by the screenwriters. I won't even bother to call the douche bags by name other than to refer to them as the assholes who wrote 2 Fast 2 Furious. An example of Wanted's need to not only suspend your disbelief, but to actually dangle it over a pit of alligators occurs near the film's climax. At the end of "Wanted" Wesley storms a factory filled with the world's greatest assassins and not a single one of them can defended the heavily guarded compound or even get a shot to hit a guy that's only been training for a week or two at this killing thing. Compound that problem with hilariously one dimensional characters whose names should have been "Gun Guy," "Knife Guy," "Rat Guy" and "Chick that looks like a guy" and you've got yourselves one mind numbingly boring flick. And speaking of the chick that looks like a guy, why the hell is Mangelina Jolie an international sex symbol? She has all the curves and sexuality of your average teenage boy combined with one of those freaky looking Bratz dolls. In one scene she gets out of one of the magic candle wax ponds naked and when shot from the back I thought that Shia LaBeouf was making an uncredited cameo.
Wanted is a vague, ambiguous action film filled with unexplained super powers, magic knitting machines and more slow motion scenes that Battlefield Earth. I had extremely low expectations for the film going into the viewing, but I was at least hoping for an entertaining flick. Instead I spent the majority of Wanted's 110 minute running time checking my watch, rolling my eyes and wishing that I had come to the screening alone. Not for the lack of good company, I had a great time with the people I attended it with, but in all honesty if I had been there by myself I would have walked out of "Wanted" less than halfway in and I wouldn’t have even bothered to write a review for it. Simply put the only enjoyable moment I had during the entire film was when Wesley finally learns how to curve the bullet around an obstacle to hit a hidden target. My enjoyment had nothing to do with McAvoy's character succeeding at something he had continually failed at; it just happened to be the exact time I finally squeezed out a fart that had been building up inside of me before we had even entered the theater.
