Make no mistake, Wanted is not a good movie. It’s loud, it’s dumb as all hell, and its ultimate message is somewhere between nihilism and just good old-fashioned misanthropism, and yet it’s damn fun. It has style and panache to spare and it celebrates a balls-to-the-wall enthusiasm for blood, guns, and ultra-violence that will appease any fan of Equilibrium, The Matrix, or Fight Club. All of these are infinitely better films, but they are at least well-honored as the templates on which Timur Bekmambetov bases his film. The style, though, is the director’s -- he’s already honed his visually audacious approach to film-making with Nightwatch, another jet-black adaptation of a graphic novel, about Russian vampires.
James MacAvoy, as Wesley, our dweeby American-accented hero, makes a rather impressive and Fight Club-Narrator-esque transformation from passive desk-jockey to active killer, but really, who wouldn’t put up with extended hazing for the chance to scamper along moving trains with a scorching-hot Angelina Jolie? Jolie, for her part, does little except slink and pout, but her quicksilver cool is captivating. It’s not really “acting”, but I guarantee that a summer of boys (and girls -- I’m not discriminating here) will have found their eye-candy of choice for at least a few months. Between the icy-hot Jolie and the stylized gunfights, with slow-motion firing and arcing-trajectories of sculpted silver bullets, what’s not to love? Or, rather, what’s not to get your testosterone racing?
This hormonal excitement is clearly intentional, as on a meta level the whole movie plays like one long emotional Viagra infusion (again, hearkening back to Palahniuk/Fincher’s anti-domestication screed) for every emasculated office-worker in the audience. It was striking that in a movie filled with bullets, graphic acts of weaponized violence and torture, the only cheers from the audience (and I do mean actual cheers) came from a scene in which Wesley takes out his aggression on his corporate co-workers. Clearly, women are hot and guns are fun, but giving your manager what-for is where it’s at.
On this theme of non-cooperation, Wanted is interesting because it actively argues against the possibility for real human connections and emotions. Wesley goes from having a girlfriend, a so-called best-friend, co-workers, and the ability to relate to other people to being the ultimate lone wolf. The girlfriend was boinking the best friend, the best friend was a douche, the co-workers were stooges, and generally the lesson becomes that other people suck. Even the talented, hardened, capable people suck.
As multiple characters say, in variation, throughout the movie, “don’t send sheep to do a wolf’s job”, but the ultimate moral is that everyone, even self-professed wolves, are sheep. And sheep always get eaten. The only truth is the one you keep to yourself. There’re not a lot of messages touting peace, love, or teamwork here. Take that for what you will. For good or for ill, it’s nice to see a movie that sticks to its guns regarding the alienation that a “lone wolf” must endure if he wishes to keep himself out of the flock.
Wanted is not going to win any awards, and if you think about it too long you’re going to end up annoyed with yourself for liking it, but for what it is -- an amped-up charge of adrenalin, fueled by hyperviolence and super-stylized action -- it’s great. It's not life-changing, but definitely the spectacle of the summer. And dear lord, does Angelina bring a new level to pure physical perfection -- that, in itself, is awe-inspiring.
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