Synopsis: Wesley’s (James McAvoy) life is over – his pathetic, old one, anyway… Fortunately, it is all because of a girl. Enter sizzling-hot Fox (Angelina Jolie), who crashes into his life and introduces him to the Fraternity, a secret society of assassins, led by the enigmatic Sloan (Morgan Freeman). Seems Wes’s long-lost father was killed while working for the Fraternity and Wes has been selected to target the rogue member who murdered him. But before he can complete his assignment, Wes must first uncover the dark secrets behind the Fraternity in order to determine his own destiny.
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Wanted 6.0

Let’s start by setting the record straight: what made the original comic book series unique has been stripped from its cinematic doppelganger. You need to know this going in – especially if you’ve read the series.

The original story took place in a world that appeared to be like our own but in actuality was run by a shadow crime syndicate of supervillains. In this world, superheroes and supervillains had battled for years, but the villains finally organized themselves and trounced the heroes. Their existence was erased from the collective consciousness, former heroes now believe to have simply played roles on TV shows, and the villains went underground to run everything with puppet strings.

Personally I like this vision. It’s a unique twist on the superhero genre and I always like seeing it from a different angle.

In the film version of the story, for a thousand years there has been an underground society of assassins that are providing balance in the world by killing people. That’s it. Not quite the same and it certainly doesn’t hold the same appeal for me.

But enough of the background. What about the main story?

In the original, our protagonist is a young guy with no backbone who hates his life and doesn’t know what to do about it – until he is dragged underground by The Fox, a supervillain who exposes him to the “real world”. He also finds out that his long-lost father was a supervillain and he was just recently murdered. Our protagonist has been chosen for training because only he can replace his father.

From there he goes through training to develop his inborn skills and to refashion is personality from jellyfish weakling to cold-hearted, self-serving dickhead. Not much of an improvement, but it is entirely fitting given the context and I think it’s wholly appropriate for the story.

I have to stop for a moment to comment on my original reaction to the comic book. While I was entertained by the fresh take on the superhero genre, I was revolted by the values vehicled in it. It basically tells its audience to take what you want to when you want it, do what you want when you want to, act the way you want when you want to , …etc. It’s basically selfishness to the nth degree and it’s counter to any concept of society – where we all take a backseat (a little bit) for the greater good.

On the flipside, I do like that it may force some people to question their inability to stand up for themselves, to take charge of their own lives. I also liked that aspect of ‘Fight Club’, even if I think it’s grossly over-rated and that its penchant for turning angst into violence was over-indulgent. The challenging part of the original ‘Wanted’ comic book series is that it revels in its badness, and makes no apologies for it; the protagonist enjoys his new life so much its perverse.

The film version basically tries to justify its existence by injecting insincere morality – as if it couldn’t allow the audience to see its true colours. The protagonist gets trained, but doesn’t have a full change of heart; he tends to question their actions and hesitates on his first real mission. To make matters worse, The Fox explains to him that what they are doing is a basically a good thing – she even cites a personal example as proof that they are doing “good” (or, rather, essential) work.

Yuck.

The casting was a problem for me. Based on the original comics, we should have gotten Eminem as our lead and Halle Berry as The Fox. Instead we got some nerdy guy and Angelina Jolie. They get by alright, but something just isn’t the same. It’s probably not their faults, really – it’s probably the script’s fault. Still, neither of them truly convinced me that they were super assassins – the guy was too wimpy (he never truly transforms) and she is too febrile, showing no muscle tone whatsoever.

The best part of the film are the action sequences – and not for the reasons you might expect. These actions scenes are so preposterously moronic as to be unforgettable! I can’t remember very many times before where I just sat there laughing at how absolutely mental the action was. With the advent of CGI anything can be done on screen now. The problem being is that filmmakers WILL do absolutely anything – no matter how completely impossible it is.

This problem started, for me, with ‘Goldeneye’, the first James Bond film in quite a few moons, and with the Bond I’d been waiting for for a decade. The moment that we saw Bond freefall towards a nose-diving plane, in the opening sequence, and his CGI-ed image overtook it, my heart sunk. For decades, Bond movies had award-winning stunt teams that achieved the impossible. The stunts were real – they were crazy and incredible to look at, but they were real. But that was no longer true.

Nowadays, filmmakers try to outdo one another for the sake of thrills, but they forget one thing: you can only suspend disbelief to a certain point. Beyond that point you’re looking at a freakshow of violence and are laughing at it; it’s no longer awe-inspiring or impressive. Until they start doing stunts for real again, it will be very hard to impress an audience – we all know it’s make believe, and we all know that the only real skill involved is imagining the sequence and programming it on a Mac.

Honestly, I almost feel like I should rate ‘Wanted’ lower than I currently am. However, based on the films I’ve watched this year, this is exactly where it lodges itself. My gut says I should give it a 4.0, but my system says 6.0. Go figure. Either way, if you must see this film adjust your expectations accordingly.