There is a scene early in "Wanted" when a super-assassin runs down an office hallway high in a skyscraper, breaks through a plate glass window at incredible speed, and flies the length of a football field to reach rival assassins on the rooftop of the adjacent building, shooting his attackers in mid-flight. This sequence establishes the over-the-top action and violence of "Wanted," a story ripped from the pages of a comic book series by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. Those who enjoyed the scene will probably enjoy "Wanted;" those who found it preposterous will have a long 110 minutes ahead of them.
"Wanted" tells the story of a secret league of assassins, their assignments chosen by fate. It also tells the story of Wesley Gibson, a twenty-something nobody. Gibson (James McAvoy) has a dead-end job, an unfaithful girlfriend and low self-esteem. His father left him the week he was born, and he appears to have no other companions beside his disrespectful girlfriend and his lecherous best friend.
Then one day at a pharmacy, where he's picking up medication, Wesley is approached by a beautiful stranger (Angelina Jolie). "Your father died yesterday," says the woman, "he was one of the greatest assassins who ever lived." From that moment on, Wesley is aggressively recruited by The Fraternity, a 1,000-year-old brotherhood of assassins, to take his father's place and kill the man responsible for his death.
"Wanted" is, naturally, short on realism and long on action. The movie exists in a comic book world where the laws of physics do not necessarily apply. That being said, many of the action set-pieces in "Wanted" are thrilling and technically eye-popping, including a firefight inside a high-speed train. The visual effects, including several nifty bullet effects, are equally impressive.
"Wanted" is the first American film of Timur Bekmambetov, a Russian-Kazakh filmmaker known for the vampire series "Night Watch." Bekmambetov does a good job at organizing all the special effects in the movie, and at drawing out decent performances from his actors, most of whom had fairly unchallenging roles. Jolie is especially good as Fox, Wesley's mentor.
The best way to think of "Wanted" is as a child of "The Matrix," albeit with a more nihilistic bent than its forebear, which investigated how the human experience has become a simulated reality.
Action-packed and visually innovative, "Wanted" is a fun summer blockbuster, but it still lacks a serious emotional element to raise it above the mediocre. Fleshing out the relationship between Wesley and Fox would have gone a long way toward infusing "Wanted" with an emotional gravity.
** 1/2 out of ****
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