Wanted (***)

Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov (Nightwatch, Daywatch)
Starring: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Thomas Kretschmann, Terence Stamp
Seen: July 11th 2008

*** Out of ****

A man walks into an office asking a woman for identification of a bullet – it’s untraceable to any gun, and the woman gets shot in the forehead. The man proceeds to, with a jump start that bends the doors of an elevator, jump through the glass of the building he is in, across the street, killing two assassins on the roof opposite (one shot around a corner, curving the bullet), catch on to the ledge, lift himself up and kill one more assassin. He receives a call, briefly talks, and is shot through the forehead. The bullet is retraced to a spot miles away, and we see the so-called villain – Cross, holding his sniper rifle.

More outlandishly unrealistic entertainment you won’t easily see this year. And it’s not that you need to switch your brain off for this one – there’s quite the “intelligent” (in context) script present here. Russian director Bekmambetov directs his first English talking American film, and he goes on in the vein of his two eternal battle between the forces of good and evil films, Nightwatch and Daywatch.

For those who’ve seen these two films (or at least one of them), the execution of Wanted will not be that foreign. For those who haven’t – this is an entirely new way to tell a story, flashy, ballsy and with a lot of flair. Yes, the action sequences are utterly unfeasible, but know what? In this universe it’s meant to be. Cars doing summersaults and assassins shooting bullets around corners are the staple of the graphic novel Wanted – which his film is based on. Only, this was the first film to be made from a graphic novel where the actual graphic novel was only released after the film.

Wesley Gibson (McAvoy) is a meek and powerless, cubicle-working, boring kind of guy. His girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend (he knows this but does nothing), his boss is one obnoxious fat lady and his life is, in general, not the American dream. Fox (Jolie) approaches him in a supermarket, telling him of his heritage – his father was the greatest assassin who ever lived – and he is next in line, since these skills are obviously hereditary. His father was killed by Cross (Kretschmann), who is now after Wesley too, and Fox saves him in a first rate and way over the top piece of vehicular carnage where they eventually abandon the escape car because of its burst tyres.

Sloan (Freeman) runs an organisation known as The Fraternity, a group of assassin’s who receive their orders on who to kill from the Loom of Fate, a device that, through a binary cipher, communicates assassination targets. Fox takes Wesley to The Fraternity’s headquarters, where he goes through some brutal training to become the next big thing in the world of assassins. He is the only one who has the [locked up] skill to stop Cross, and this needs to be drawn from him as soon as possible.
What follows is a series of action sequences that will have your jaw scraping the floor (if this is your kind of thing), and a few twists in the story, which leaves you rather exhausted as you walk out of the cinema. It is, however, a good bit of exhaustion, and this film is one hell of an adrenaline rush.