STUDIO: Universal
RELEASE DATE: June 27, 2008
STARRING: Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Common
WRITTEN BY: Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, Chris Morgan
DIRECTED BY: Timur Bekmambetov
GENRE: Thriller
RATING: R

They are the deadliest assassins the world has ever known. Genetically enhanced, they execute superhuman feats of death. No target has ever escaped alive. They are the Fraternity. It’s not a very imaginative moniker, but then again they are in a movie called Wanted, a title as generic as brand X. This is the first American film by Russian director Timur Bekmambetov whose Night Watch and Day Watch are the two most successful movies in his country’s history. Before his success in film, Bekmambetov spent 15 years directing TV commercials... and it shows. Wanted is like a commercial for Wanted, which is to say Bekmambetov constantly sells his film to the audience the same way one sells a used car. He distracts you with gimmicks to keep you from looking under the hood, hoping you won’t notice that Wanted, for all its firepower and frenzy, is a lemon.

James McAvoy plays Wesley Gibson, an office plebe abused by his boss, and cuckolded by his girlfriend. Like so many of us, Wesley feels insignificant and doomed to a monotonous and uneventful life. And then a sexy and daring assassin named Fox, played by Angelina Jolie, steps into his path to recruit him into the Fraternity, a small circle of agents led by Sloan (Morgan Freeman), also flanked by the Gunsmith (Common) and the Butcher (Dato Bakhtadze). There, Wesley will train to become a killing machine and avenge the death of his long-lost father, formerly the organization’s number-one assassin.

Located within Chicago, the Fraternity’s headquarters is an old textile mill that houses the Loom of Fate, a device critical to their mission. It’s believed the Loom weaves a secret code into pieces of fabric. By decoding the fabric, Sloan arrives at the name of their next victim. It’s by carrying out these killings that the Fraternity maintains balance and harmony in the world. In other words, the Fraternity is a collection of lunatics executing murderous orders given by a dish rag.

Such is the logic of the flimsy script by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas. Their work on last year’s 3:10 to Yuma was outstanding, but their latest effort finds them regressing to their 2 Fast 2 Furious days. Wanted is lean on characterization and overloaded with clunky dialogue and logically-bereft plotting. Given how writer Chris Morgan was brought on board to rework an already paper-thin draft by Brandt and Haas, it’s clear why the film feels like a cousin of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Cellular. If you are a fan of those titles, you’ll probably find yourself drawn to Wanted’s popcorn intellect and frenetic escapism. If you’re looking for a cohesive story and something to care about, you’ll definitely "want" something else... that is, unless you only want a few dazzling Eastern European locations and a solid performance by James McAvoy.

When we last heard about McAvoy, he was being lauded for his work in last year’s Atonement. Here, he smoothly traverses Wesley Gibson’s expansive arc from nebbish everyman to assassin. He builds a rich internal life, bringing full breadth to a two-dimensional role. Wesley Gibson is the most fleshed-out character in the movie, but ultimately he never transcends the limits of archetype. McAvoy’s rigorous performance is one of Wanted’s finer points, but in the end he's upstaged by unrelenting effects, implausible shootouts and hyperbolic car chases.

As for the Fraternity, Sloan is a father figure to the organization, but of course there are two sides to everybody. Morgan Freeman maneuvers through familiar character territory, doing what he always does best, playing an authority figure. Even as a character of lower stature, like in The Bucket List or Million Dollar Baby, he still exudes authority. Freeman does it well, and it’s precisely what he does here. No more, no less, such are the limits of his role.

Presumably a star of Angelina Jolie’s standing has her pick of projects. For whatever reason, she picked Wanted, a movie that offers her few lines, including a cliché-ridden scene about her reasons for joining the Fraternity after a personal tragedy. She’s mainly called upon to give the film several doses of hellfire gun power while zipping around in a spiffy red Viper looking sexy/deadly. In other words, something she can do in her sleep. Jolie is a screen siren in the classic sense, one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood. Fox is a role normally filled by a supermodel transitioning into movies, not an A-lister. In the end, after a couple of serious roles and being dogged by the paparazzi, maybe she just "wanted" to have fun?

In his home country, director Timur Bekmambetov owns and operates Bazelevs, Moscow’s premier production and postproduction/effects facility. In Wanted, he puts his outfit to work freely augmenting scenes with CG, including super slow-mo bullets colliding head-on in mid-flight, guys crashing through glass, guns blazing; you’ve seen it done better in films like The Matrix, Hard Boiled and countless others. One of Wanted’s conceits is the Fraternity’s signature move: by whipping a gun on a fast draw, they can curve the trajectory of a bullet, allowing it to move around obstacles to hit its target. This is demonstrated with a lot of CG-enhanced, slo-mo bullet POV shots and other gimmickry. Fetching at first, even "fanboyishly" cool, it quickly becomes tiresome.

Although comic book/graphic novel creators Mark Millar and J.G. Jones served as producers on the film, many layers from their original comic mini-series were either removed or transformed. The Wanted mini-series was predicated on the question of what would happen if the bad guys won? What would happen if the world of super villains overcame the world of heroes? The world of Wanted is one where teeth-rattling beatings are administered arbitrarily, where target’s names are a matter of chance, where relationships are expedient. It is where an everyday man goes to escape his everyday life only to lose something precious. There is no moral code here, only the desire to decimate. Described this way, it sounds like ripe turf for a post-modern nihilistic fable; something bleak, visceral, daring and original. Instead we have a hoary, old cliché about an emerging hero with father issues. Instead we have Wanted, a factory-sealed product free of ideas, wit and originality glossed over by a fast and furious veneer.