Movie and Television Reviews

As opposed to the unredeemed awfulness you'd expect from an Angelina Jolie comic book movie, I was pleasantly surprised by Wanted's thorough mediocrity.

Wanted by Mark Millar, J.G. Jones

In 1008, a secret society called "The Fraternity" formed to "bring the world in balance" (Or so modern members say. I suspect, frankly, that sheer medieval boredom led to The Fraternity. What else was there to do: go bowling? How else to explain the flourishing of assassination cults in this era?).

So, in 2008, The Fraternity recruits a repressed cubicle jockey named Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy of Atonement fame). They train him to do a job that only he can do. He accomplishes this task, but things aren't as they seem.

"Stylish violence" are the operative words here. Visually impressive in the Matrix way, I'm only slightly embarrassed that I liked seeing the bullets curve and the cars in controlled flips over buses. I'll check with the Sci-Fi Apologist, but according to the wiki entry for Issac Newton, every stunt is impossible. We see many bullets going through heads. Wanted eschews the body explosions of Rambo 4, however.

Dramatically, the first half of the movie is very good and one of the best introductions of a character who later undergoes metamorphosis in recent movie memory. In Gibson, Wanted succeeds is creating a character with whom many modern, cubicle-bound, secular, sensitivity-trained Western men can empathize: He questions his life status and place in the universe and fumes at not being able to speak truth to power. Power, in this case, being his boss, girlfriend, and best friend.

The training scenes in the second act are OK. The movie loses steam when Gibson must apply his new found skills are less impressive and bored me.

Angelina Jolie is an attention-grabbing, but annoying actress. She mostly just leers and stares here, uttering no more than thirty words in the whole movie. And, what's up with her shoulders? At least the director doesn't give her an accent.

Nerds only:

The reason why The Fraternity needs Gibson makes sense. The recovery chamber is cool. The explanation of the Fraternity's near-super hero abilities- that they learn to focus their unusually high level of adrenaline- makes sense as an origin. No comic book inside jokes.

Politics/Message:

Gibson learns to stand up for himself.

The philosophy animating the original Fraternity is one of bringing balance to the world which is the same for the medieval cult, "League of Shadows," in Batman Begins, I think. Of course, most people wish to vanquish evil, not make sure that it doesn't get an advantage in relation to good.

The Matrix

Batman Begins (Widescreen Edition)