Wanted (2008) Review:

Today’s comic book movies are supposed to be gritty and dark. But there's a difference between that and this particular film. The film "Wanted" is about a young man, Wesley (James McAvoy), who is going through a mid-life crisis and can't figure out what his purpose is in life. That is until he runs into a woman named Fox (Angelina Jolie), who brings him into a secret society of assassins called "The Fraternity". Just to point out by the way, that “The Fraternity” is the LAMEST name of a group I have ever heard!! Why not just call it "The Group" to be even less specific?

James McAvoy.........doesn't he look stupid?

What I could not believe right off the bat was how low the vocabulary level was for this film. What were the scriptwriters doing...pretending they were teenagers again? Practically every sentence drops the F-bomb, how does this enhance the film any? Yes, sometimes the F-bomb is dropped but not every sentence. That’s just being crass. Every character in this film has no dignity whatsoever...not even the main character's boss!

Then we have the issue of characterization. James McAvoy’s acting is offensive and insulting to all actors in Hollywood. What appealed to him in the script? The fact that he got the chance to curse his mouth off? Yeah real professional. Oh and he also says "I'm sorry" way too often and makes a lot of distorted faces which makes me hate him that much more. Not to mention for the first half of the film, he's a crying sack of crap just like Shia LaBeouf from Transformers (2007). Either grow up or go home McAvoy.

Even Angelina Jolie's character was weird. Sure Jolie's always sexy but supposedly she based her character off of Clint Eastwood. So tell me where any of the scenes she played in resembled that. I didn't see one. Plus the laws of physics really don't seem to apply in this film. I can see maybe someone curving a bullet path, but jumping off a building onto another building 500 yards away AND MAKE IT WITH NO INJURIES? These are assassins, not superheroes. Mark Millar and J.G. Jones I think have too many screws loose in their deranged heads.

Not as cool as you'd think......

Oh, let's not forget the special effects! There's plenty slow motion if you're into that kind of stuff. That is unless you don't like seeing it every 5 minutes in every scene. Seriously folks, slow motion is good when it's time for the audience to focus on something and this kind of event rarely occurs. It doesn't occur that often here either, but for some reason the filming crew felt it was necessary for EVERY cotton-picking scene!

As for action goes, there's plenty of bloody gunshots. Not that that really made the viewing experience anymore exciting. It felt more numbing than it did entertaining. There was actually one point where two people were having a gunfight but it wasn't going anywhere because they were trained so well that their shots kept clashing. How dull. Why don't you shoot TWICE? Idiots. Even Danny Elfman's score provided little propulsion in this film. It wasn't engaging and it was thrilling. Thumbs down Elfman. And then to top it off with the greatest insult to all, at the end of the film, James McAvoy has the guts to ask the audience, "What the f*** have you done lately?". I tell you what Mr. McAvoy, I've wasted two hours of my time watching you play the most annoying character I have ever seen on screen!

I had WANTED this film to be cool but in the end, I WANTED to beat the hell out of my TV screen. Timur Bekmambetov's film is the perfect example of what film trash really is. It needs to be buried in the Earth's core.

Points Earned --> 1:10