WANTED [R]
review by Padraic Maroney

With credible actors like Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy, and rap crossover Common, the words should have flown from the pages of Mark Millar’s and J.G. Jones’s comic book series. On paper, the action sequences are kept moving at a blurrily fast pace, and readers typically comment, “This would make a great movie.” Additionally, the director of this adaptation, many-hatted Russian wonder Timur Bekmambetov, previously helmed the acclaimed Night Watch series, which pulled off pairing a comic book sensibility, a dark fantasy world and gonzo action. Here in Wanted, though, none of the pedigreed pieces ever quite gel, leaving a disjointed film that isn’t fun for anyone to sit through.

The story is about a schlub named Wesley (McAvoy) whose life is wholly uninteresting until he is recruited into a secret justice society called The Fraternity by a sexy agent named Fox (Jolie). He is trained in the Zen-like ways of the gun, though the more he taps his inner gifts, the more he realizes that The Fraternity and its leader, Sloan (Freeman) are not all that they seem.

The actors especially never quite seem to find their chemistry as a whole, though occasionally we get to see a flicker of sparks between Jolie and McAvoy. Part of the problem is that the script, With the exception of McAvoy’s character (who for the majority of the film suffers from an inferiority complex) none of the other characters have much depth to them. In the end, you’ll feel sorry for the hundreds of the movie’s unknowing kamikaze rats (don’t ask) before feeling anything for the human characters.

Jolie gets away the least scathed of all involved. She is at her butt-kicking babe best here, with a character that almost seems like it should be in a prequel to her previous actioner, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. She adds a bit of depth to Fox through quick glances and gestures, but the raw magnetism that Fox exudes is something that is all the actress herself. A sizable portion of the film is spent on Fox spearheading the training for Wesley as he prepares to go after his father’s killer. Not much time is left in the film’s 110 minutes to actually squeeze in what everyone is going to plunk down their hard earned cash to see. In fact, by the time the exciting, shoot ‘em up conclusion arrives, it’s difficult to get excited for the film anymore, in that our adrenaline has been baited one too many times with no payoff.

Along with the pacing, the movement through the action sequences is also awkward. Bekmambetov attempts to tell much of the film’s story through his trademark overly stylized visuals, yet it too often feels like we are watching a kid in a candy store wanting to try everything before defaulting to a tried-and-true favorite treat. Slow-motion shots, unnecessarily close angles and blurred, frantic shots are Bekmambetov’s favorite, and he overuses them all. Our instinct is to give him some slack, because this is his first American made film, but his overall hyperkinetic style makes the film even less accessible than it reads.

Sadly, Bekmambetov somehow manages to take all of the advantages the project had on paper and squanders them from Frame One. True, many summer blockbusters benefit from a wholesale rejection of realism, but while some films — like the recent Get Smart — know how to walk the line of suspending our belief and delighting us with things from completely out of left field, Wanted misuses the two hours we spend in the dark gazing up at it by failing to make us believe that its way-out world exists.•••

Padraic Maroney is a regular contributor to EDGE.