Aug 14 2008
Wanted Production Photos
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Aug 14 2008
Wanted E! Reviews
Review in a Hurry: Wanted may not be what it wants to be, but it’s (just barely) what it needs to be: an unapologetically brutish action-thriller that moves just fast enough to outrun its gaping flaws.
The Bigger Picture: No matter how good your day was, it probably wasn’t as exciting as this: Dead-end office drone Wesley (James McAvoy) discovers he’s a natural-born killer and heir to a storied legacy, all of which is definitely OK by him since he has a foxy agent called Fox (Angelina Jolie) showing him the ropes.
Wesley’s soon inducted into the Fraternity, an elite corps of “assassins of fate,” superhuman killers who can pull off Matrix-style stunts and curve bullets—impressive tricks for a thousand-year-old cult that gets it marching orders from, of all things, a loom.
You know, for weaving. Seriously.
The loom spits out names at random, the Fraternity kills those people. It’s this kind of silliness that’s nearly the film’s unraveling. Hey, screenwriters: pretty sure you’re not supposed to try to suspend disbelief with actual thread.
This wouldn’t be so galling if Wanted weren’t otherwise a reasonably mature action film: visually exciting thanks to Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch), twisted in all the right ways and anchored by a star-making performance by McAvoy.
The set pieces don’t hurt, either, especially not the climactic shootout, which meshes the seemingly effortless fluidity of early John Woo films with the technical virtuosity of the Wachowskis. So long as you don’t particularly mind how you get there, Wanted is a hell of a ride.
The 180—a Second Opinion: Fans of the source material are in for a few disappointments. The film keeps some of the snarl of Mark Millar’s outrageous comic but very little of the bite.
Aug 14 2008
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
“Wanted” slams the pedal to the metal and never slows down. Here’s an action picture that’s exhausting in its relentless violence and its ingenuity in inventing new ways to attack, defend, ambush and annihilate. Expanding on a technique I first saw in David O. Russell’s “Three Kings,” it follows individual bullets (as well as flying warriors) through implausible trajectories to pound down the kills.
The movie is based on comic books by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. Their origin story involves an anxiety-ridden, henpecked, frustrated office worker named Wesley (James McAvoy), who you might have glimpsed in a bogus YouTube video trashing his office. In the movie, he gets the opportunity to trash a lot more than that. In a plot development that might have been inspired by James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (but probably wasn’t, because who reads that great man anymore?), Wesley gets the opportunity to avenge on his tormentors and enter a fantasy world where he can realize his hidden powers as a skilled assassin. This happens after he is picked up in a bar by Fox (Angelina Jolie), who confides that he is now a member of the Fraternity, a thousand-year-old secret society of assassins who kill bad people. I suppose a lot of people, if they were picked up in a bar by Angelina Jolie, would go along with that story. Although the Fraternity’s accuracy rate can be faulted (they missed on Hitler and Stalin, for example), its selection methods must be Really Deep, since orders are transmitted through the Loom of Fate. As demonstrated in the film, if you look at a cloth really, really, really closely, you can see that every once in a while a thread is out of line. These threads represent a binary code that is way deeper than my old Lone Ranger Decoder Ring. They also raise questions about the origin, method and reading of themselves, which are way, way, too complicated to be discussed here, assuming they could be answered, which I confidently believe would not be the case.
Never mind. Wesley leaves his office life for a hidden alternative existence in which he masters skills of fighting (by hurtling hundreds of feet) and shooting (around corners, for example). And he is introduced to Sloan (Morgan Freeman), who, the moment I mentioned Morgan Freeman, you immediately knew was deep and wise and in charge of things. He lives in a book-lined library (but Wesley, to my intense regret, never asks him, “Have you really read all these books? Anything by Thurber?”). Sloan explains that Wesley’s father was a member of the Fraternity, killed years ago by the man Wesley is now destined to kill. This is Cross (Thomas Kretschmann), who lurks in Europe, where Wesley also meets Pekwarsky (Terence Stamp), another fraternity brother. (Do you suppose the Fraternity’s secret handshake is fatal? If brothers give it to each other, do they both die?)
I’d guess there are, oh, 10 or 15 shots in this entire movie without special effects. The rest of the time, we’re watching motion-capture animation, CGI, stuff done in the lab. A few of the stunts look like they could not have been faked, but who knows? What do you think your chances are when you run on top of a speeding train? For that matter, if you were assigned to kill someone in Chicago, could you figure out a better way to do it than by standing on top of an L train while it raced past your target’s office window? And how did the Fraternity know he would be visible through that window? And how … oh, never mind.
“Wanted,” directed by a hot Russian actionmeister named Timur Bekmambetov, is a film entire lacking in two organs I always appreciate in a movie: a heart and a mind. It is mindless, heartless, preposterous. By the end of the film, we can’t even believe the values the plot seems to believe, since the plot is deceived right along with us. The way to enjoy this film is to put your logic on hold, along with any higher sensitivities that might be vulnerable and immerse yourself as if in a video game. That “Wanted” will someday be a video game, I have not the slightest doubt. It may already be a video game, but I’m damned if I’ll look it up and find out. Objectively, I award it all honors for technical excellence. Subjectively, I’d rather be watching Danny Kaye in the film version of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.”
Note: I learn that “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” will be remade next year and will star Mike Myers. Having seen Myers’ “The Love Guru,” I think I can predict one of Walter’s big secrets.
Jul 31 2008
You Talkin’ to Me, Boys? (Bang-Bang, My Pretties)
The money shot in “Wanted,” its pièce-de-special-effects-résistance and reason for green-lighted being, appears in the opening minutes of this noisy, ultraviolent shoot-’em-up with Angelina Jolie, her many tattoos and some guys. A man has soared onto the roof of a high-rise where he has laid a handful of others to waste. Suddenly the camera cuts to his face as a bullet exits his forehead in slow motion, his skin stretching forward as the projectile tears through it, going straight for the camera and our already numbed skulls.
Well, that’s one way to get the attention of fickle moviegoers, particularly if, like the director Timur Bekmambetov, you’ve got nothing else going for your big Hollywood debut except Ms. Jolie and a couple of ideas recycled from “The Matrix” and “Fight Club.” Mind you, Ms. Jolie has been perfectly cast as a super-scary, seemingly amoral assassin named (wait for it) Fox. Few American actresses, especially those with such pin-skinny arms, can make beating a guy to the ground look so easy and, yeah, man, like fun. With her mean smiley-sneer and snug clothes, her heels and hieroglyphics, she cuts the kind of disciplinarian figure who can bring antsy boys of all ages to their knees or at least into their theater seats.
Beating down the audience is what the crudest entertainments try to do, and in this respect, and in every other, “Wanted” is nothing new. And Mr. Bekmambetov, a Russian filmmaker who has earned a cult following with his razzly-dazzly thrillers “Day Watch” and “Night Watch,” certainly proves here that he knows how to use every blunt tool of the bullying trade: flashy effects, zippy cuts, simulated death, walls of sound, wheels of steel and, in between the bullets and blood, a hot mama to make the brother-to-brother, man-on-man action less worrisome. This is, after all, a movie almost entirely organized around the sights and sounds of men piercing one another’s bodies, which makes for a whole lot of twitching and spurting.
“Wanted” is a goof, then, and for a short stretch a pretty diverting one. The basic story, culled from a comic-book series by Mark Millar and J. G. Jones, revolves around a pusillanimous cubicle drone named Wesley (James McAvoy, going for cheeky and packing new muscle), who, at least in the movie, has been conceptualized along the same Everyman lines as Edward Norton’s character in “Fight Club.” Both have soul-sucking jobs, self-mocking voiceovers and a glamorous comrade in violence who ushers them into thrilling worlds of excitement and life-altering action, except that Mr. Norton’s friend is played by Brad Pitt, and Mr. McAvoy’s friend is played by Mr. Pitt’s real partner, Ms. Jolie, which, for about a millisecond makes this sound far more interesting than what actually materializes on screen.
What does turn up looks familiar — the slowed bullets, the air that ripples like water, an underground group, here called the Fraternity — especially if you’ve seen “The Matrix.” Although Mr. Bekmambetov and his team take plenty of cues from that film, they have tried to distinguish their dystopian nightmare by borrowing from even farther afield. To that end the Fraternity practices its murderous skills on pig carcasses (much as Daniel Day-Lewis does in “Gangs of New York”) while bunkered in a sprawling factory (that looks like Hogwarts). I’m pretty sure I saw the fabulous recovery room — a concrete spa filled with sunken tubs and lighted candles where Fraternity members go for restorative soaks after a hard day of carnage — in a layout in Vogue.
The problem is that after a grindingly repetitive rotation of bang-bang, boom-boom, knuckle sandwiches and exploding heads, I wanted to sink into one of those tubs myself (minus the rats scuttling nearby). There’s no denying Mr. Bekmambetov’s energy or enthusiasm: he blows people and stuff up with gusto. But all his visual ideas, or at least the memorable ones, are borrowed, as are the pitifully few thoughts in the script by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan. Even if the ideas in “The Matrix” didn’t blow your mind or stir memories of college-age woolgathering, at least it has ideas and real feeling. There’s something at stake in its world, which is why its fusion of skepticism and sincerity worked so well, and still does.
Things happen in “Wanted,” but no one cares. You could call that nihilism, but even nihilism requires commitment of a kind and this, by contrast, is a movie built on indifference. Fox and the rest of the Fraternity — headed by Morgan Freeman, voice and eyes glazed with boredom — initiate Wesley into their killing ways. He, in turn, discovers their dusty secrets (blah-blah, monks and weaving), eyeballs the other guys (Common and Thomas Kretschmann, both wasted) and learns how to make a bullet curve through the air, a trick that soon loses its wow factor. Mr. Bekmambetov jerks the strings, setting his puppets to dancing. Right on cue Mr. McAvoy swaggers and Ms. Jolie smiles even as Mr. Freeman checks his watch, beating me to the punch.
“Wanted” is rated R. (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.) Nonstop violence, brief kitchen-counter sex.
WANTED
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Timur Bekmambetov; written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan, based on a story by Mr. Brandt and Mr. Haas and the comic books by Mark Millar and J. G. Jones; director of photography, Mitchell Amundsen; edited by David Brenner; music by Danny Elfman; production designer, John Myhre; produced by Marc Platt, Jim Lemley, Jason Netter and Iain Smith; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes.
WITH: James McAvoy (Wesley), Morgan Freeman (Sloan), Angelina Jolie (Fox), Terence Stamp (Pekwarsky), Thomas Kretschmann (Cross) and Common (the Gunsmith).
Mar 12 2008
Wanted Theatrical Trailers:
Mar 12 2008
Star as Fox in Universal Pictures’ Wanted
Angelina Jolie star as Fox in Universal Pictures’ Wanted.
Morgan Freeman star as Sloan in Universal Pictures’ Wanted.
James McAvoy star as Wesley in Universal Pictures’ Wanted.
Angelina Jolie star as Fox in action movie from Universal Pictures’ Wanted.
Common star as The Gunsmith in Universal Pictures’ Wanted.
Mar 12 2008
Wanted Synopsis
Based upon Mark Millar’s explosive graphic novel series and helmed by the stunning visualist director Timur Bekmambetov—creator of the most successful Russian film franchise in history, the Night Watch series—Wanted tells the story of one invisible drone’s transformation into a dark avenger. In 2008, the world will be introduced to a superhero for a new millennium: Wesley Gibson.
25-year-old account manager Wes (James McAvoy) was the most pathetic, cube-dwelling hypochondriac the planet had ever known. His boss chewed him out hourly, his girlfriend cheated on him daily and his life plodded on interminably. Everyone was certain this weakling would never amount to anything. There was little else for Wes to do but wile away the days and die a slow, clock-punching death.
Until he met a woman named Fox (Angelina Jolie).
After his estranged father is murdered, the deadly sexy Fox recruits Wes into the Fraternity, a secret society that trains Wes to avenge his dad’s death by unlocking his dormant powers. As she teaches him how to develop lightning-quick reflexes and phenomenal agility, Wes discovers this team lives by an ancient, unbreakable code: carry out the death orders given by fate itself.
With wickedly brilliant tutors—including the Fraternity’s enigmatic leader, Sloan (Morgan Freeman)—Wes grows to enjoy all the strength he ever wanted. But, slowly, he begins to realize there is more to his dangerous associates than meets the eye. And as he wavers between newfound heroism and vengeance, Wes will come to learn what no one could ever teach him: he alone controls his destiny.
Mar 11 2008
Wallpaper of Wanted
Mar 11 2008
Angelina Jolie making ” Wanted” exclusive footage 08-17 p2
Angelina was doing her own stunts on the hood of a dodge viper that was shot up with broken windows For the Movie called wanted being filmed in chicago.