Blood, guts, bullets, octane and a thousand exploding rats

Wanted
Review by Nathan Weinbender

Pardon me for liking “Wanted.” I was not expecting to and was sort of ashamed that I did, but I can’t deny that it has a certain twisted, bloody charm.

Here is a film that unabashedly defies common sense and bastardizes the basic law of physics, all in the name of action and violence, and it creates a palpable universe that comfortably exists somewhere between reality and pulp fiction. It operates on a system of cheerfully screwy logic, and it makes as much sense as something this completely senseless can.

I learn that the movie is inspired by a series of comic books, which I could have guessed; either that or a video game. It begins by introducing us to Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), who is a lifeless drone working in a nondescript office building. He hates his job, hates his boss, hates his girlfriend, hates his life. He is, he tells us, “the most insignificant asshole in the world”—that is until he discovers his father was an amazing assassin, and he has inherited the ability to handle a gun the way Michelangelo handled a chisel.

Wesley’s fellow assassins belong to a secret society known as the Fraternity, which was founded a thousand years ago by, get this, burlap weavers. See, they can read messages hidden in the threads, and it produces a kind of binary code that tells them who their next targets will be. They’re like harbingers of fate, killing people because, well, it’s their destiny to be killed. “We maintain stability in an unstable world,” someone says. “Kill one, save a thousand.”

Morgan Freeman is Sloan, the leader of the Fraternity, who politely explains to Wesley his uncultivated talents, such as shooting the wings off flies. Angelina Jolie is the steely-eyed mentor, the aptly-named Fox, who stands in front of Wesley and orders him to shoot around her. Bullets do other amazing things in this movie—they travel extreme distances, they collide and deflect one another, they kill multiple people in a single shot.

This is all very absurd, very violent and very entertaining. “Wanted” has tongue firmly implanted in cheek, and its action sequences are as ridiculous and over-the-top as they probably can be (one scene involving a plague of rats rigged with bombs is particularly inspired). It’s so bombastic and preposterous that its tenacity becomes almost admirable—but perhaps I should stop there.

I may have made “Wanted” sound more valuable than it really is: It’s a whole lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but put your brain on autopilot and you might have a good time.

Grade: B

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov. Written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan. Based on a comic book series by Mark Millar. Starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Common, Thomas Kretschmann and Terence Stamp. R; 110m.