Wanted (2008)

It’s been a very long time that I felt so repelled by a movie that it made every cell in my body scream with an urge to switch it off, to get away from it, to make it stop insulting my senses. Wanted made me feel that way.

By his own admission, Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), is a bit of a non-entity. He works as an account manager at some generic firm and gets walked all over by his boss, girlfriend and supposed best mate. One day in a convenience store, he gets picked up by Fox (Angelina Jolie), who explains that Wesley’s long lost dad has just been killed. Turns out, papa was the world’s greatest assassin and the man who killed him is now after Wesley. After trashing half the city and causing deaths of countless extras in a shoot up and chase scene, Fox takes him to the headquarters of the imaginatively named, Fraternity.

We learn that Fraternity is an ancient organization of assassins, founded by weavers (yes, weavers) to rid the world of evil people. How do they know who to assassinate? Why, bad peoples’ names are coded into the threads of woven fabric. Um, so like who puts the names in the thread?  Faith, says Sloan (Morgan Freeman) the leader of the organisation. And like, what happens if the Fraternity doesn’t off people as the thread tells it to? Evil people are then let free to conduct evil deeds. Do not question the fabric!

Moving right along. Wesley agrees to be trained by the Fraternity in order to hunt down his father’s killer but mostly to escape his sad-ass existence. The training involves daily bashing, knifing, humiliation and general torture concluded by a bath in some wax-like substance which speeds up the recovery process. But fear not for the meek Wesley, for he ends up stronger and a better person for it. He even learns to ‘curve the bullet’. (You know how lame, conventional shooters only fire bullets in a straight line? The members of the Fraternity do a shoulder thing and their bullet curves to hit a target hidden behind an object.)

Wanted doesn’t simply celebrate violence. It fills a bathtub full of it, jumps in and smears it all over its body in delight. You hear the phrase “violence porn” bandied around a lot by hysterical people, intent of “protecting the children”, and I think I finally fully understand what it means – it is this movie described in just two words.

Visuals which should have been stunning are naff, unnecessary and annoying. Every second shot is shown in slow motion and accompanied by an audio track of a thumping heart beat. Why? Camera following a speeding bullet in reverse to its source? Seen it before in much better films.

But, if Wanted is insulting to your eyes and ears, it’s nothing compared to how insulting it is to your intelligence. It seems to be going for a Fight Club style message but it is the antithesis of that movie. No brains, no humor and oh, did I happen to mention how the Fraternity picks its victims? Yes, the thread.

I have long ago learn that Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie will prostitute their names and acting skills in all kinds of trash but I have seen most of James McAvoy’s  efforts and they have ranged from very good (Penelope, Becoming Jane) to brilliant (Atonement, The Last King of Scotland).  Wanted murders that record with a spray of curved bullets to its head.