I give this movie a 6.6 out of 10.
This movie is one for which I had high hopes. I saw it as perhaps a new variety of an anti-hero centric movie, or perhaps even a sharp commentary on a mentally engaging subject (necessarily offset by explosions and gunfights). This movie was, as Wesley said, all of these things and none of these things.
The premise of the movie is the life of Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), a man who suffers from severe panic attacks and feels he has no control over his less-than-mediocre life. His boss is a harpy, his girlfriend and best friend are having an affair, and his head feels like it's going to explode with the load of nothing inside it. Until he has his life rescued by an attractively dangerous woman named Fox (Angelina Jolee). She brings him into an organization called the Fraternity, a group that assassinates targets picked by a mystical loom. The Fraternity is headed by Sloan (Morgan Fox), a man who tells Wesley that his father had been assassinated. Through a series of brutal training rituals, Wesley becomes one of the best in their group. In the end, he discovers that Sloan had been manufacturing targets and that Wesley's father had gotten in the way. Wesley exacts his revenge on the Fraternity, and is the only one to survive in the end.
"Wanted" appears as if it is trying to focus of the plight of the average Joe; the feeling of hopelessness and lack of control that everyone feels at some time in their lives, if not all the time. This film takes that feeling and tries to make a shiny idea out of it, complete with bullet-curving abilities and nearly supernatural reflexes and capabilities for the Fraternity members. It succeeded in a limited way.
The movie does touch on this topic, even highlighting in a characterized fashioned consistent with the rest of the film. However, somewhere between Wesley's boss shouting at him and his arrival at the Fraternity, the story sinks into a simple plot consisting of an average man becoming powerful. Wesley flies into a rage and kills based on unsupported information from the Fraternity. When he finds that to be a lie, he lashes out at them and kills most of the group for forcing him to kill a father he never knew. His mood throughout the film to say the least was a tumultuous lashing of curse words and violent, gratuitous rage. Now, I'm all for a character going berserk and super-human on us, just not for a sad excuse for revenge. Wesley had nothing to exact revenge for; his main goal was killing people in order to gain control. That's fine, but just spit it out.
The film pretends to be addressing something deeper than what it really is; an appeal to an audience of men who wish they could do the same thing as Wesley, which is gain power and control (not to mention the sweet weapons and the amazing ability to use them). It is certainly directed toward a specific audience, but it could have been more if the makers had dug just a little deeper into some of the vague themes of the movie.
In the end, I was less than impressed with "Wanted," perhaps more than it warranted because of the unused potential I saw. The visuals were impressive, as was most of McAvoy's performance and the gunfights, but the rest was lacking. For an anti-hero movie, this one comes up short. Despite its attempt at a dark tone, the movie simply comes across as a temper tantrum thrown by the protagonist.
At the conclusion of the movie,Wesley ends up with exactly what he began: nothing. And he seems not to see that. Before the Fraternity he was a loser with no life, and after he is a killer with no life. And I answer his parting question of "What the f**k have you done lately?" with a question of my own. "How has what you've done any more important?" Everyone he knew and could have loved was dead or gone. So, Wesley
Now what?
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