Timur Bekmambetov's wanted bowed in theaters this weekend to huge crowds. Admittedly not Wall-e big but pretty damn close. This is an impressive acheivement for an R rated movie and this is a hard R "for strong bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and some sexuality.". The cast includes a bevy of Oscar winners/nominees including Morgan Freeman, Terrance Stamp and Angelina Jolie as well as James McAvoy as the male lead and its only a matter of time for his oscar(he has a boat load of British Oscar equivalents and a Golden Globe nomination.
This Tale of an office drudge who doesn't know that he is secretly a highly skilled assassin until he is recruited/abducted by a secret 1000 year old society of weavers?????, who take orders from the loom of fate about who to kill next. Yeah the set up sucks.
McAvoy sleep walks through the first twenty minutes doing a fairly flattering rip of Ed Norton's running commentary from Fight Club. Then Angelina Jolie shows up playing the mysterious sexy bad girl, and the action commences. The actions scenes range from very good to great, including one particurly good foot chase where McAvoy winds up firing shots from the hood of a car as he persues. There is plenty of stuff that requires significant suspension of the average person's disbeleif and the film will suffer in some eyes because it cannot quite decide which world it exists in.
Althogh certainly stylish, the film leans heavily on violence and eventually becomes weighed down by this fact. What should be the film's emotional climax seems instead an afterthought and the hero too often comes off as a bully(although I guess if I spent my life as a punching bag and then suddenly developed super powers I might bully a little too). If you didn't understand or agree with any of what I said then it probably won't or didn't bother you. All and all worth a look for the visuals alone, including a little Angelina Jolie nudity(and that's the best kind).

Labels: Feeman, Jolie, McAvoy, Timur Bekmambetov, Wanted