Wanted Review
by Steve Rhodes (steve DOT rhodes AT internetreviews DOT com)June 27th, 2008
WANTED
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2008 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): 1/2
WANTED is a disgusting film that obviously should have been rated NC-17 for its obnoxious level of gross and excessive violence. Human bodies are beaten to a pulp like slabs of raw meat. The MPAA failed us again, worrying about sex and nudity in other films, which are normal, but ignoring massive levels of inhumane violence in movies like WANTED.
But, even if the movie were properly rated, it would still be absolutely awful. One of the worst films of the year, it possesses almost no original ideas. Instead, it rips off other movies, taking their signature features and twisting them to ridiculous levels. This is seen most of all in the way it takes the body and bullet moves of THE MATRIX and tries to amplify them a hundredfold, making them look outlandish and just plain stupid.
Actually, you can probably forget everything I've said, that is, if you are like most members of our theater audience. In what I think of as the BATTLEFIELD EARTH phenomenon, some movies are so atrocious that it becomes downright fun to laugh at them. Listening to viewers later, the oft-heard refrain was that, sure the movie stunk, but it was still fun laughing at its inanities. While I was cringing in disgust during the movie, most of my audience found its ridiculous moments entertaining. Personally, I was ready to run out screaming after thirty minutes.
The plot concerns a mysterious and nefarious organization known as "The Fraternity." This secretive group has been around for over a thousand years. They are a band of blood-thirsty assassins, who, we are told, only kill those deserving of death. Gosh, don't you feel better already? These murderers won't bother you. They'll just go after the guy next door, who doesn't recycle like he should. Actually, we don't know how they go about deciding who deserves death. What we do know is how the assassins are given their missions, which is pretty silly.
The film's editor is obsessed with showing off what he can do in post-production by including the maximum amount of slo-mo, speed-ups, freeze frames and instant rewinds. These techniques are so overused that it could make any movie almost unwatchable. Of course, WANTED isn't just any movie. It's a really bad one, made even worse by its overly clever editor.
Most of the movie has members of the fraternity shooting at each other. These world-class marksmen -- and women, most notably the film's headline star Angelina Jolie -- manage to almost never be able to hit each other. Rather than being the world's best shots, they frequently appear to be the worst. When they do get close to wounding each other, the bullets collide in mid-air. This happens again and again, ad nauseam.
The story concerns the training of the Fraternity's newest member, Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy). He is recruited by Fox (Jolie) to kill the killer of the father he never knew. It turns out that Wesley has Fraternity blood in him, so that, when asked to shoot the wings off of flies, he discovers, to his considerable surprise, that he can do it the first time he tries. He also finds that he is at heart a sadistic and violent man. He has such anger issues that, when he goes back to work, he breaks a keyboard over the face of a coworker he never liked. The poor guy's face is pulverized and some of his teeth are knocked out.
This consistently mean-spirited movie has perhaps a single saving grace. Wesley comes up with an ingenious scheme to storm a veritable fortress of killers. But, although inventive, the scheme is telegraphed way in advance, blunting the cuteness of its effect.
I found the movie painful to endure. If I had not been there to review the film, there is no question about what I would have done. I would have walked out. The only issue is how much pain I would have put up with before giving up on the movie. Do yourself a big favor and never walk in in the first place.
WANTED runs a long 1:50. It is rated R for "strong bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and some sexuality" and would be acceptable for college students and older. It, as I said previously, should have been rated NC-17.
My son Jeffrey, age 19, gave it just one star, complaining that he had never seen a more blatant knockoff of THE MATRIX. He said that WANTED had way too many "Oh, come on!" scenes of utter ridiculousness. And, for an action movie, he was quite surprised how dull it was. He said that the only thing that interrupted his constant checking of his watch was that the film was sometimes literally laughably bad. Jeffrey's girlfriend Yasmin, almost 19, gave the film one star as well. She complained all of the gimmicks were overdone and highly repetitive. She didn't like the main character or anything else about movie. Overall, she found the story really lame.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, June 27, 2008. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
Email: [email protected]
***********************************************************************
Want reviews of new films via Email?
Just write [email protected] and put "subscribe" in the subject line.
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
