CINEMA: Wanted

Comic book adaptation Wanted is the US debut of Russian fantasy action maestro Timur Bekmambetov, of Night Watch and Day Watch fame, Jim Machin gives his verdict.

Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is an anonymous office schlub – bullied at work, cuckolded by his girlfriend and remarkable only for the incapacitating panic attacks he regularly suffers. This mild mannered accountant’s life of quiet desperation and self-loathing is shattered when he is caught in the crossfire of an apparent attempt on his life in his local grocery store. He is abducted by a mysterious gun-wielding stranger (Angelina Jolie), and introduced to the suave Sloan (Morgan Freeman), who tells him that he’s actually the progeny of a recently killed member of an elite group of assassins (The Fraternity) who have – through judicious executions of the bad and dangerous – been the safeguards of civilisation against the forces of chaos for the last thousand years or so. He also discovers that a rogue member of the group murdered the father he never knew, and that he’s the only one with the potential to avenge his death.

Quickly deciding that hanging around with Jolie and throwing his lot in with this gun and knife slinging  crowd is a better bet than sticking to his day job as a brow-beaten no-mark, he’s soon learning to use his latent powers (something to do with controlling adrenaline production… don’t ask), and becoming less self-conscious about taking his shirt off. In no time at all, he’s on the trail of his father’s killer  -a trail easy enough to pick up as his father’s killer is regularly taking pot shots at him – and whizzing off to Europe to hunt him down like the dog he is.

Wanted has several things going for it – a strong cast, high productions values, an occasionally witty script and a distinctly old world sense of the grotesque. Jimmy McAvoy acquits himself very well and puts the work in to convince as an action hero. Jolie and Freeman, on the other hand, phone in performances that never deviate from their standard shtick, Jolie clinging desperately to a single expression – self-satisfied smirk. The plot is so much risible nonsense, but that’s really besides the point when the meat and drink of the film is the action – gun-play, twitch-edits, car chases, slow motion bullet time, more gun-play, Peckinpah-esque sprays of blood and more fancy camera/CGI interplay. For the opening half an hour or so, all this is fairly engaging, as is McAvoy’s character, who has far more to do and elicits more sympathy in his initial incarnation as a white collar loser than he does as a muscle-bound uber assassin. The initial promise soon turns to disappointment as the story becomes more generic with every twist and turn. It’s actually difficult to imagine a film more straightjacketed by Hollywood screenwriting formula.

Wanted is not for the faint hearted, and takes almost sadistic glee in Gibson’s brutal induction into the Fraternity, which seems to involve getting endlessly beaten up until one reaches an appropriate level of existential angst to qualify as a member. Although cartoonish, the violence is relentless and culminates in a John Woo style bullet ballet with an absurdly high body count. By the end of the film, the early promise seems a distant memory and the viewer has been well and truly bludgeoned into indifference by its interminable and mindless Sturm und Drang.