Review: Wanted

Ok so I read the comic book that this film was based on. When I started looking into exactly what Wanted was about (other than the stupidity that is curving a bullet) and saw that the source material was about a pseudo amalgamation existence of Fight Club and The Matrix, where your life is shit and just go through with it and are noe satisfied and are dogged by the norms of society and are hoping and could even sense something greater out there (also known as your regualr pathetic existence), but instead of discovering everything is a computer program or that you are schizophrenic, you find out you have an awesome power and are destined to be a part of a group that does whatever they want, takes whatever they want, with no consequences and you are freed from your shitty life, and are also looking into who killed your father, it interested me. Basically a superhero origin story, but instead of saving people you do whatever it is you ever wanted. I mean even few villains are like that, they’re either fighting for a purpose or have a vendetta or something. So the character possibilities seemed interesting. Now admittedly the comic book couldn’t quite pull it off, but the idea was still interesting brain food. So naturally what the movie did was take all that was interesting about the book drop that and ending up with a flat idea that wasn’t pulled off very well.

As I sort of stated the plot is a about a guy who hates his shitty life, but then discovers he is super talented (in this case he has perfect aim and other stuff) and is destined to be a part of a group of assassins that his father belonged to before he was offed. So he does this and changes and stuff.

Ok so here’s where the movie sucks. Instead of s group of villains who secretly seized power to do whatever they WANTED (huh? huh? anyone know where that’s from? know what the title means, but is now pointless no that the plot was changed?) it’s a group of altruistic assassins who kill people based on what a loom tells them. Why? Who knows? It's fate that creates anomalies in the fabric as binary code that is then translated into names (of course this was discovered hundreds of years back when binary was really big). So the most interesting part is taken away, but that’s alright they changed it up a bit, whatever it could still work. No. No it can't. James McAvoy’s character (I forget his name) is a pussy, but when he is confronted by five trained killers with guns and is shown his power and offered a way out of the life he hates he decides to turn his gun on the them threatening them and escaping, but when he sees his father’s inheritance in his bank account (something the killers told him about) he suddenly becomes a man and tells off his boss and lays the smack down on his friend before going back to the league. Does this character change seem a bit odd? I guy who’s pissing his pants while riding in his car and can’t talk back to his boss suddenly decides to turn a gun on a room of assassins who know he is a pants-pissing pussy? And the moment he realizes he might prefer this new destined life his father had as opposed to being shit upon by his work and cheated on by his girlfriend is seeing the extra three million is father left him? I mean at that point it’s his anyway, so why change now? It’s just stupid (but not as stupid as curving bullets). But from there his training is pretty cool (except with curving bullets) sort of like La Femme Nikita, but not as cool. But soon there is some retarded plot twist and things sort of go bad as he hunts for his father’s killer (That’s not true! That’s impossible! [did you get the hint?]).

Now where I was looking for this film to be in any way good was in the action. But alas that even disappoints. It ranges from cool to mediocre to making no sense at all (but not as little sense as curving bullets). In fact the only truly awesome part was when Angelina Jolie spins a car around with the passenger’s door ajar and tucks McAvoy inside. And I’ll admit that was sweet, but that’s about it. And speaking about Jolie there is a part where she is on the hood of the car in a dress with her legs on either side of McAvoy’s head and we are not even serviced with a crotch shot. What is that about? And it’s not like it’s a gratuitous crotch shot, it would actually be applicable to story and scene.

So a lack luster comic with an awesome premise is hacked of its premise and transformed into a bad movie. Take a pass.

Rating: 4/10