Wanted (2008)

Originally Written

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Wanted is one of the first films in a long time I have really been looking forward to based on the sheer awesomeness of the trailers alone. There's no one in this film I'm a big fan of so it takes a great trailer to suck me in to see something I ordinary wouldn't go to the theater to see and Wanted pulled that off with probably one of the best set of trailers of all-time. But the question is does Wanted deliver or is everything worth seeing shown in the trailers?

Wanted is the latest edition of graphic novel adaptations that seem to have become quite popular in recent years, with films like Sin City and 300 these films bring a darker, grittier and more mature dose of violence than that of our typical mainstream comic book heroes. Wanted is no different than past graphic novel adaptations, it is better, but it's still got its faults. Atonement's James McAvoy plays the lead character, Wesley Gibson, a timid cubical worker whose life is a huge disappointment. His job is boring, his boss is a pain, and his girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend behind his back and he's too much of a wuss to do anything about it. Wesley bottles up this frustration inside otherwise he breaks out into panic attacks which only makes his life more miserable, but that's all about to change.

Wesley is approached by a group of assassins known as The Fraternity. Started a thousand years ago The Fraternity's main goal is restore balance to the world by eliminating individuals that would inevitably cause much damage and destruction in the world, "kill one to save a thousand" is what The Fraternity lives by. Wesley learns his father, who he never knew, was apart of this Fraternity and was recently murdered by a rogue member, now that ex-member, Cross, is after him and he's the only one capable of killing him... now he only has to learn how.

If you're searching for non-stop action, then Wanted is for you. None of the stunts or special effects are necessarily new but it's still highly exhilarating and has some of the best action sequences since The Matrix. Now if you want a little bit of potatoes with your meat you might be in for a bit of a disappointment because Wanted's success purely relies on violence and nothing more. The story is shoddy at best, and held together with a few decent plot twists, which encompass most of the story in this film alone. The acting is below average with veterans Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman giving rather dull performances void of any real emotion. It's almost as if they showed up for the paycheck and didn't try too hard.

McAvoy was a good choice for the lead, making an entertaining transition from loser to hero but there's no real talent needed in his portrayal of this character. Most of the time McAvoy relies on a barrage of four letter profanities to attempt to convey almost every emotion in every situation, which gets old fast. But that's not the fault of the actor rather more a sign of a bad script which obviously took a backseat to the creation of the action sequences. When will film writer's learn that a strategically placed profanity has much more of an effect than a mouth full of them every five minutes? They obviously know this to be true because the only two times in the film Morgan Freeman curses are very potent and comical, but that all seemed to have been forgotten with McAvoy, whose vocabulary is quite limited.

Overall, based on action alone I'd give this film a higher score, it's well done, it's constant, consistent and it's even a little shocking at times. But if I rated films on only the best portions then every one would receive high scores, unfortunately you have to look at the bigger picture, which Wanted fails to do. While it's action sequences are near top notch everything else is near average, it's something that's pretty common in these graphic novel adaptations but that's still no excuse, there have been action films that were capable of doing everything right, look at the Bourne series. In the end, Wanted is by far the best graphic novel adaptation made to date and is at least progressing the genre to a higher level but it still overlooks some of the other areas of a film such as a storyline and well written script. Had the actors been given a little more to work with Wanted would have been that much better. But if you take it for what it is, Wanted is still a fun film and a definite roller coaster of a ride, just don't expect anything more.

7/10