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Wanted
(2008)
At the center of Wanted's labyrinthine plot is a big room with a big loom, The Loom of Fate. In his very best sonorous tones, Morgan Freeman's elder-statesman assassin Sloan explains to new recruit Welsey Gibson (James McAvoy) that the Loom is a self-starting form of automatic writing presumably coming direct from a capricious, unseen God. Hidden messages ordering hits are transmitted through the Loom "so that we might forge stability out of chaos...The Loom provides. I interpret. You deliver." Of course, anyone who's read a history book can tell you how easily faith in the divine can be manipulated to the selfish ends of man. Quite reasonably, Wesley wonders whether or not he ought to be shooting one man at a time, presumably to save thousands down the line. But if this seriously fucked-up hero weren't to follow his orders, we'd be short one highly entertaining helping of shoot-'em-up, car-crunching action.
The Ancient Greeks saw the loom as the province of women, perhaps as a symbol of their domestic importance in holding together the fabric of society. The textile factory of the Fraternity, a clan of weavers-turned-assassins, shares a similar goal, but pursued with ruthless and deadly efficiency. Worker drone Wesley Gibson lives in not-so-blissful ignorance of these goings-on. He's busy enough tamping down anxiety attacks at his supremely annoying, dead-end cubicle job. It's not just his boss to whom he can't stand up. In his state of self-loathing, even his ATM machine disses him: "Your best friend is fucking your girlfriend. And you're too big of a pussy to do anything about it. ACCEPT/CANCEL?" But one evening in one of those supermarkets called "The Egg Store," a new life is hatched for this spring chicken when he finds himself in the crossfire between two assassins: Cross (Thomas Kretschmann) and Fox (Angelina Jolie).
In a seriously pumped-up action sequence that just dares you to blink, Wanted shifts into high gear. The shootout/car-chase finds Fox whisking Wesley away to the Fraternity with the explanation that the father he never knew was one of the world's greatest assassins (referring to a gun, Sloan says, "He could conduct a symphony orchestra with it"). Dad's just been killed, and his genetically-gifted son is next. Wesley can learn the ropes and live to see a life of killing, or futilely try to hide from a top-notch rogue killer. Reluctantly, Wesley begins to submit to a training regimen that includes no-quarter knife fights, daily pummelings, and target practice in how to "bend" a bullet's path around obstacles to a target. As his schooling progresses, Wesley reasons, "Finally I have a chance to step into my father's shoes. Grow a pair."
There's a strong element of wish fulfillment to Wanted, with its erstwhile-loser hero telling off his boss, leaving behind Chicago's squalid slums to live above and beyond the "ordinary" and "pathetic," and playing shock absorber to Angelina Jolie's sexuality. He's drawn into his new life for reasons that become clear, then obscure, and then clear again, and we're perversely with him every step of the way. McAvoy gives a shrewdly calibrated, expressive performance, and director Timur Bekmambetov assists with highly subjective use of sound and special effects (also dig the adventurous Danny Elfman score). Shattered-glass junkie Bekmambetov showed serious promise with his Watch films (Night Watch, Day Watch), and Wanted is just the film to make a full-bore crossover to Hollywood. With Jolie in a perfect marriage with her sexpot-killer role (complete with ecstatic moan after besting a baddie), and Freeman a hoot in a juicy role of his own, there's no point in sweating the little stuff.
In point of fact, there's very little "little stuff": the stunning stunts are plenty flashy—with McAvoy's eyes popping and cheeks waggling in slo-mo—the effects ornate but tasteful, and the trick editing jolts the film with extra energy. Though the film uses Mark Millar's graphic-novel series as no more than an inspirational jumping-off point, the film asks to be judged on its own merits, which are considerable. The existential-philosophical feints developed by Michael Brandt & Derek Haas and Chris Morgan are just enough to elevate the film from mere, if good, action porn to a story that at least considers the consequences of pulling a trigger and how it changes a person ("Who am I now?" Wesley asks himself, and us, at picture's end). Then again, the film's climactic shootout, considered in hindsight, finds the anti-hero's ends justifying some pretty horrible means.
Most of the overstated, overblown blockbuster movies that we've permanently bought ourselves during the summer months only tastelessly aspire to top the last guy's action flick. But Bekmambetov clearly is working from his own fantastic-action muse. Wanted unapologetically delivers slam-bang action entertainment, and does it while putting a surprising twist on the archetypal heroic journey.
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