Wanted

Directed By: Timur Bekmambetov
Rating: R (US) / 18A (Can)
Runtime: 1 hour, 50 min

After having one too many brain cells dismissed by the Love Guru, my husband and I decided to pull a double feature and take in “Wanted” to wash away the foul taste of the Guru Pitka. It seemed that several more of my brain cells were blown away, but this time it was not due to inactivity. Wanted definitely lived up to its trailer, delivering an intense thrill ride with the gritty graphic novel feel that we all came to know and love in Frank Miller’s Sin City.
The film begins with Wesley Gibson, pecking away character by character at his dull life in a cubicle where he is an account manager who suffers from anxiety. His boss won’t let up, his girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend, and there is never quite enough in the bank account to dig himself out of the rut. And he lets you know it. The narration sets the tone for Gibson’s pathetic life, as he complains about the monotony of it all, and his apathy towards attempting to change.
One fateful night as Gibson is waiting in line for his next round of anti-anxiety pills, he is visited by Fox, (Angelina Jolie) and the thrill ride begins. Fox informs his that his father is one of the greatest assassins who has ever lived, and the man who killed him is staring at them from across the room. A shootout begins right in the pharmacy aisle, that barely ends until the end of the film, spliced with Gibson’s training regime at the guild of assassins called The Fraternity whose mantra is “Kill one, maybe save thousands”, though generally in the killing of the one, there is a tsunami sized wake of injury, destruction of public property, and presumably a good amount of unnecessary civilian death.
The thing that surprised me the most about this film was the lack of emotional response from the lead character. It seems as though anybody who entreats on a physical journey of that magnitude would have somewhat of an emotional response to his new awareness. Though there are glimmers of change as Wesley struggles with the reasons for who he is assigned to assassinate and why The Fraternity exists the way they do, it still seems that no significant change is brought to the surface and Wesley is no better off emotionally at the end of the film than he is at the beginning. Having missed out on the graphic novel, perhaps there is something I am missing about the portrayal of this apathetic frustrated character, or perhaps I am attempting to add emotional depth where it has no business being, in a no-holds barred, intense thrill ride, with a big budget, a big cast and several big guns.
This film will likely do well at the box office, and will appeal to its primarily male audiences with non-stop action and Angelina Jolie’s sexy portrayal of the only female assassin (or so it seems). The violence is plentiful, though not quite as graphic as Sin City, and the language holds up to the Restricted Rating. I would not recommend this film to the faint of heart, or to anyone who is offended by mindless bloodshed. That being said I was entertained in the “popcorn movie” sense, similar to my feeling upon viewing Triple X, or Hitman, worth the watch if this genre is your cup of tea.