Movie Review: Wanted

If you've never visited the site before, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or create an email subscription using the link at the top. Enjoy the site, and thanks for visiting!

It’s been a while since I wrote one of these reviews - particularly one that I decided to “feature”. It’s also been a while since I watched something at the cinema and immediately decided I needed to see it again. In that sense, it seems fitting that Wanted marks my return.

Have you seen that Michael Bay advert? It’s the one where Bay proclaims that everything should be “Awesome“. That’s kind of how Wanted feels - everything needs to be Awesome. Yes, with a capital A.

There are huge parallels with the first Matrix movie here - just the first one, before they fell in love with their own mythology and the trilogy essentially disappeared up its own arse - in that it takes a very normal, insignificant guy, who works in a Dilbert-esque cubicle, and turns him into a superhero.

The difference here is, we care about that guy. OK, Neo was cool, but we didn’t spend enough time with him to really care. Wanted’s resident nobody Wesley Gibson basically has no life. His job sucks, his girlfriend and best mate both think he’s a joke, he’s broke, he lives in a shitty little apartment, and wonders why he bothers to get out of bed in the morning. Did Neo feel like this? No idea, we weren’t given time to find out.

And the fact that we get to see so much of Wesley’s life before his transformation, means that when he takes his life back - or perhaps more accurately gets a life - we’re cheering him along. There’s a moment with a Microsoft Natural Keyboard that I’m sure will put a large smile on the face of many a frustrated computer user. I’ve owned one of those things…they could do some damage.

And thanks to director Timur Bekmambetov - best known for Night Watch and Day Watch - when Wesley does turn into a superhero it feels, like I mentioned before, Awesome. Wesley is recruited into The Fraternity - a 1000 year old club of elite assassins, led by God himself Morgan Freeman. After which much plot twistyness ensues.

We don’t have to wait for the Awesomeness though; it begins early on with an introductory sequence featuring Doomsday’s stern-faced David O’Hara - is it just me, or does it seem like a real effort for that guy to talk? - which sets the tone for the rest of the film really.