DJG / Wanted

Wanted * * * ½
Directed by: Timu Bekmambetov / 2008

I’ve wanted to see “Wanted” ever since I saw its Super Bowl commercial spots from earlier this year. On top of the sheer awesomeness in film perspective that the clips gave me, I also thought about how awesome the marketing was to secure Super Bowl advertising time for the millions of violence loving football guys watching (Oh, and most guys love Angelina Jolie too). I know that the day after The Super Bowl, I was one of many young men You Tubing the trailer, passing it to their buddies and posting fan-boy blogs about it. Unfortunately, I somehow missed the film when it finally came to theaters six months later. With the exception of maybe an advanced screening or opening night, I doubt that the film packed out theatres, but I would have loved to see this one with a wound-up crowd fist pumping and laughing hysterically. OK…Imagine a two thousand-year-old elite group of assassins generically called “The Fraternity” given secret killing assignments based on microscopic binary code-like letters deciphered by boss man Morgan Freeman on a tapestry created by a giant ancient loom. Mix this original screenplay writing genius with the typical cliché plot route feature of a “Rouge” assassin hunting all the other assassins down and then throw in a totally hot assassin babe mentoring a young new guy discovering that he too possesses his recently departed father’s assassin skills and destiny to kill instead of working in an office cubicle and in a matter of a days he beefs up and becomes the greatest assassin to ever live and you’ve got a movie called “Wanted”. What the heck am I doing working in my own office cubicle job when I could be writing Hollywood action fantasy flick genius like this? Oh and don’t forget a garbage truck full of peanut buttered rats and a key board that gets smacked against some jerk’s face with letters flying to the camera spelling out “F#*K YOU”. Yep…do I need to say more? Oh, and of course there is a message about how you’ve got to take hold of your life and make what you want of it. Heck yeah! I’m not making this stuff up. If films could produce babies, “Wanted” would be the offspring of a three-way between “Shoot ‘em Up”, “The Matrix” and “Fight Club”. It’s not as great of a film as those (the last two being groundbreaking masterpieces), but every bit ridiculous and over-the-top-awesome in scope and merge of action and technology. If my enthusiasm in writing this review adds up to cinema treasure for you as easily as a Super Bowl commercial teaser did for me, then put “Wanted” on your list. I think I’ll now stop writing reviews and get to writing action movies.

-djg