WANTED
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2008 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): 1/2
WANTED is a disgusting film that obviously should have been rated NC-17
for
its obnoxious level of gross and excessive violence. Human bodies are
beaten to a pulp like slabs of raw meat. The MPAA failed us again,
worrying
about *** and ****ity in other films, which are normal, but ignoring
massive
levels of inhumane violence in movies like WANTED.
But, even if the movie were properly rated, it would still be absolutely
awful. One of the worst films of the year, it possesses almost no
original
ideas. Instead, it rips off other movies, taking their signature features
and twisting them to ridiculous levels. This is seen most of all in the
way
it takes the body and bullet moves of THE MATRIX and tries to amplify them
a
hundredfold, making them look outlandish and just plain stupid.
Actually, you can probably forget everything I've said, that is, if you
are
like most members of our theater audience. In what I think of as the
BATTLEFIELD EARTH phenomenon, some movies are so atrocious that it becomes
downright fun to laugh at them. Listening to viewers later, the oft-heard
refrain was that, sure the movie stunk, but it was still fun laughing at
its
inanities. While I was cringing in disgust during the movie, most of my
audience found its ridiculous moments entertaining. Personally, I was
ready
to run out screaming after thirty minutes.
The plot concerns a mysterious and nefarious organization known as "The
Fraternity." This secretive group has been around for over a thousand
years. They are a band of blood-thirsty assassins, who, we are told, only
kill those deserving of death. Gosh, don't you feel better already?
These
murderers won't bother you. They'll just go after the guy next door, who
doesn't recycle like he should. Actually, we don't know how they go about
deciding who deserves death. What we do know is how the assassins are
given
their missions, which is pretty silly.
The film's editor is obsessed with showing off what he can do in
post-production by including the maximum amount of slo-mo, speed-ups,
freeze
frames and instant rewinds. These techniques are so overused that it
could
make any movie almost unwatchable. Of course, WANTED isn't just any
movie.
It's a really bad one, made even worse by its overly clever editor.
Most of the movie has members of the fraternity shooting at each other.
These world-class marksmen -- and women, most notably the film's headline
star Angelina Jolie -- manage to almost never be able to hit each other.
Rather than being the world's best shots, they frequently appear to be the
worst. When they do get close to wounding each other, the bullets collide
in mid-air. This happens again and again, ad nauseam.
The story concerns the training of the Fraternity's newest member, Wesley
Gibson (James McAvoy). He is recruited by Fox (Jolie) to kill the killer
of
the father he never knew. It turns out that Wesley has Fraternity blood
in
him, so that, when asked to shoot the wings off of flies, he discovers, to
his considerable surprise, that he can do it the first time he tries. He
also finds that he is at heart a sadistic and violent man. He has such
anger issues that, when he goes back to work, he breaks a keyboard over
the
face of a coworker he never liked. The poor guy's face is pulverized and
some of his teeth are knocked out.
This consistently mean-spirited movie has perhaps a single saving grace.
Wesley comes up with an ingenious scheme to storm a veritable fortress of
killers. But, although inventive, the scheme is telegraphed way in
advance,
blunting the cuteness of its effect.
I found the movie painful to endure. If I had not been there to review
the
film, there is no question about what I would have done. I would have
walked out. The only issue is how much pain I would have put up with
before
giving up on the movie. Do yourself a big favor and never walk in in the
first place.
WANTED runs a long 1:50. It is rated R for "strong bloody violence
throughout, pervasive language and some ***uality" and would be acceptable
for college students and older. It, as I said previously, should have
been
rated NC-17.
My son Jeffrey, age 19, gave it just one star, complaining that he had
never
seen a more blatant knockoff of THE MATRIX. He said that WANTED had way
too
many "Oh, come on!" scenes of utter ridiculousness. And, for an action
movie, he was quite surprised how dull it was. He said that the only
thing
that interrupted his constant checking of his watch was that the film was
sometimes literally laughably bad. Jeffrey's girlfriend Yasmin, almost
19,
gave the film one star as well. She complained all of the gimmicks were
overdone and highly repetitive. She didn't like the main character or
anything else about movie. Overall, she found the story really lame.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, June 27, 2008.
In
the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century
theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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