Wanted…

-Starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and Common

-Directed by Timur Bekmambetov

Adapted very loosely from Millar’s awesome Wanted Comics

This movie would not, nor could not have walked without the presence of Fight Club and The Matrix running in front of it to pave, then manicure, then put up all the signage of conventional wisdom on how to make this roll down the road. The story is a familiar one of a normal guy (McAvoy) narrating his pathetic life, then running into the chainsaw of fate (Jolie) and finally learning that all in not as it seems.

Jolie seems to be a selling point for the film but I kept looking at her and thinking why is it in the realm of possibilty someone so grotesquely skinny can be taken seriously as a killer of killers? It’s not the point she shows what she has become, devolved as an actor with such good roles in Girl, Interrupted., Hackers and Gia to the kind of MILFy, smoky, sex dripping vixen that hangs in the back of Whiskey A Go-Go  at 2am she seems to be taking the same career path as Brad Pitt. She is serviceable in this role but I kept thinking what a real sex bomb with chops could do to this role, think Monica Belucci or Maria Bello.

McAvoy gets kudo’s for being the best nerdling with a +3 pencil of shitheel since Ed Norton’s Tyler Durden got fist to face raped by himself in Fight Club. He pulled a Tobey and got in shape to look the part of a killer of a killers, not enough can be said about an actor that changes physically to take on a physical role, nice job son.

Morgan Freeman is god in the Almighty movies but, in this movie but he called in the performance, just cut-in his role from Dreamcatcher, subtract the cop moustache eyebrows and BLA-M-M-O you have his a little good, a little bad leader of killer who kill, killers schpeel.  

The action is the selling of point of the movie, stylized, relentess and fresh thanks to director Bekmambetov’s flair for the slo-mo and extreme close-ups.  -see Night Watch and Day Watch for more of his amazing work

The story summary is fun here, the boy is bored with life, his girlfriend sucks (not him) and he is drug addled to remain what he thinks is sane, meanwhile a whole fun filled life of beating the snot out of people is just around the corner…let’s fast forward and all jump aboard to see what happens when he wakes up as a badass killing machine.

This movie is like my reviewing technique a flash-bang good, cheap, one-night stand so check it out for a good 2 hours of action.

-zeke

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