WANTED: A Real-Time Review

Real-Time DVD Review: Wanted 

Welcome to our Real-Time review section here at The Student Voice online. If you don’t know what a real-time review is: I sit down and watch a movie and tell you about it as I go. It’s like sportscasting, or “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” or a combination of the two. Occasionally, the movie will require a drink or two before watching (i.e. romantic comedies, horror movies), and those will be carefully documented as well. The time stamps are estimated, probably badly. And in case it needs to be stated: SPOILERS AHEAD 

Today I’m watching Wanted, directed by Timur Bekmambetov (a Russian-Kazakh director in his first major American film), and starring Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy (whom I assume everyone knows as Leto Atreides, assuming everyone is a fan of SciFi originals and/or Dune), and Morgan Freeman, whom most people know as Morgan Freeman. It’s based on the comic of the same name by Mark Millar. 

Here goes: 

0:01: Intro cards: “A thousand years ago…A clan of weavers formed a secret society of assassins. They silently carried out executions to restore order to a wor—” Wait. Weavers? Like the people that make baskets and mats? Is that what we’re talking about here? 

That is what we’re talking about here. They’re called “The Fraternity,” because apparently “The Basketmakers” didn’t sound deadly enough.   

1:00: Voice-over by McAvoy as we follow him through an office scene and a few flashbacks, telling us the basics of his character: lousy job, best friend banging his girlfriend, father issues, ennui, yadda yadda. Normally I would call this technique lazy and blunt—and it is those things—but McAvoy’s reading comes off as genuine. 

3:00: People’s heads are exploding. A guy in a suit (McAvoy’s father?) just killed five men while flying through the air from one building to another. This is more awesome than I could’ve imagined. He takes a phone call and we get some vague conversation about “You can’t leave The Fraternity” and whatnot.  

Wait, turns out this was a trap. Guy in Suit is standing on an X, and OMFG! A bullet just tore through his forehead in super-slow motion. Jesus. Now the bullet goes in reverse and we follow it back to its shooter, some guy that looks a little like Clive Owen. 

6:00: Is that Stiffler? No, no that can’t be Stiffler. 

7:00: We learn that McAvoy is on anxiety meds. We learn because he tells us. Okay. Still blunt, but okay. McAvoy’s facial expression is pretty telling, though. I’d like to have seen this without the voice-over. Chances are the message is still mostly there. 

Bekmambetov takes a page from Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) in shooting the mundane office scenes like high-drama action sequences. It’s effective, funny, and works with the voice-overs. 

9:00: Angelina enters. She’s playing a tough-ass, straight-talkin’, no-nonsense bad girl. This is so refreshing from her.  

She gives him that speech from the preview: “You’re father was killed this morning, etc., etc.” Then bullets are gettin’ shot around all kind of corners as they try to escape this assassin guy. 

Holy shit, cars are flying. They’re just flying. 

20:00: McAvoy’s in the secret lair. Morgan Freeman is there, being Morgan Freeman, but like a Morgan Freeman you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. He tells McAvoy to shoot the wings off some flies. 

And he so does. 

24:00: Wow, that anxiety medicine info actually came back. Apparently what he thought were panic attacks were actually the result of his super-accelerated heart rate, which makes him pretty much a superhero. Or Leto Atreides.  

Freeman gives speech about McAvoy’s powers, destiny, father, etc. McAvoy runs away, realizes he already played this part but in a much better movie (Dune, for those of you not paying attention.) 

Jolie does a surprisingly adorable little fake scared reaction when McAvoy points a gun at her to get out of the secret lair. Aw. 

30:00: The scenes between McAvoy and his office supervisor are classic — kind of Office Space meets Hot Fuzz with some Aronofsky thrown in. 

33:00: They’re at a textile mill. Oh, Weavers! Right! McAvoys mentions the whole assassin thing, and all the weavers suddenly get very quiet, just like normal, non-assassin weavers would. 

Note: Jolie’s lips are so overrated. Just too much lip there for me. 

36:00: Now McAvoy is being initiated, I guess. It involves a very large latino man stabbing a knife through his hand. 

36:30: And now he’s encased in carbonite? 

45:00: Angelina Jolie’s butt: eh. 

47:00: Breakthrough: McAvoy admits his identity crisis whilst Jolie beats the crap out of him with brass knuckles. Time for a heart-to-heart with Morgan Freeman.  

48:00 Training montage! Complete with meat-punching! 

Jolie and McAvoy do some flirtatious train-top racing. 

Culmination: McAvoy has to curve a bullet around Jolie. I think this was in the preview, too. The twist is he kills her. No, kidding. It works perfectly.  

50:00: Whoa, whoa, whoa. The weavers actually weave binary codes into their fabrics. It’s all coming together! 

They get the names of their targets from the cloth.  
Freeman: “The loom provides. I interpret. You deliver.”
McAvoy: “You want me to kill Robert Deane Darden?”
Freeman: “Not me. Fate.” 

So…Fate is ordering hits? All right. 

52:00: McAvoy balks on his first assignment. He’s questioning motives. Jolie looks like she might get naked. Instead, she tells a lame story. So far, the rating’s promise of “some sexuality” is severly overstated. 

55:00: Sweet Fancy Moses, that was the coolest action sequence I’ve seen in a long time. McAvoy’s target is in a bullet-proof limousine, so McAvoy, with the help of Jolie in a different car, launches his Mustang rolling through the air over the limo to shoot the guy through his moonroof. The soundtrack and slow-mo “I’m sorry” by McAvoy take it from awesome to just solid cool. 

57:00: Jolie makes out with McAvoy to stick it in the faces of his girlfriend and Barry. It sticks pretty good. 

60:00: McAvoy is shot when he and Jolie are ambushed. It was the dude who killed his father, the one who I now realize looks nothing like Clive Owen.  

Jolie is given a new target. Good money says it’s McAvoy. 

65:00ish: Some things happen. McAvoy is pursuing the guy that shot him, using the bullet that he was shot with. A train is involved. Bullets are bouncing off bullets. Jolie crashes a car into said train. And now the train is falling off a giant bridge. A bunch of useless civilians die. 

Wait, whoa. Clive Owen Guy is saving McAvoy’s life. McAvoy shoots him.  

80:00: Clive Owen Guy to McAvoy: “You are my son.” I also liked this scene when it was in The Empire Strikes Back.  

Jolie to McAvoy: You’re the only one that could kill him, etc. “His name came up… So did yours.” Oh shit! So called it. She shoots him.  

85:00: McAvoy is still alive. He’s in a room with some old guy. Old Guy tells him everything: his father wasn’t trying to kill him all along, he was trying to save him from the life of a Fraternity assassin. Okay, not bad.  

90:00: McAvoy finds his father’s awesome old guns, presumably to kill Morgan Freeman with. The only way this showdown could be cooler is if McAvoy was Steven Segal. Then he buys a lot of peanut butter; delivers cliché lines about killing and fate. 

92:00: He drives a dumptruck into the Fraternity compound.  

My attention wanders and I miss how the peanut butter comes into play. Something about rats, and then the rats explode. I don’t know.  

93:00: Things are exploding, McAvoy is running, jumping. 

100:00: At this point, I’m entirely inventing these time stamps. I have no idea what time in the movie this actually is. Regardless, McAvoy has exploded just about all the heads, and he’s in a room with Jolie, Freeman and the other top Fraternity assassins. It’s a circular room, and they stand around the perimeter.  

Pointing a gun at Freeman, McAvoy tells them all that Freeman has been inventing targets for his own purposes ever since the loom produced…get this, his name. That’s right, the loom gods wanted Freeman dead. McAvoy’s father knew this, and that’s why he was killed.  

After McAvoy explains this, Freeman admits it and explains his case, showing that they were all named for assassination—that the loom had basically ordained the Fraternity to kill itself. It’s decision time. Obey the loom, or join Freeman and continue to be super assassins/weavers. 

Best line of Freeman’s career: “Shoot this motherfucker!” 

Jolie fires a curving shot that takes out everyone standing around the room, then stands stoically to take the bullet as it comes full circle. It’s touching, kind of. Freeman escapes, to be killed during a McAvoy voice-over sequence in which he finds himself trapped like McAvoy’s father was. Freeman utters the second best line of his career: “Oh, fuck.” Then a bullet bursts through his forehead in slow motion.  

At this point, I’m thinking this movie was a hell of an action flick and succeeded in originality, both stylistically and plot-wise. Wasn’t the most brilliant plot, but more than we have come to expect from action movies.  

And at this point, apparently, the creators were thinking: How can we shit all over the viewers? I mean euphamistically—like, how can we totally insult them for spending their time and money watching this? How can we leave them walking away saying, ‘That was the stupidest ending I’ve ever seen?’” 

Here’s how: McAvoy gives a voice-over monologue about taking control of his life and making something of himself—admittedly the theme of the movie—then looks right at the camera and says, “What the fuck have you done lately?” 

What the fuck have I done? I just paid $10.00 and spend two hours of my life watching your movie. Don’t insult me for it, jackass.

-Kyle Adams