Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Wish Fulfillment Done Wrong


 
Wanted
2008
D: Timur Bekmambetov
**********
Pros: Some Clever Ideas, One Precision Curse, A Nice Custom Gun, A Good Score
Cons: Unlikable Characters & Themes, Action Style, Obnoxious Gimmicks


       My 10-year anniversaries have proven to be a reliable way to motivate me, and today is the anniversary of Wanted.  I checked and was somewhat surprised to learn that the movie was critically acclaimed for its stylized action (where the hell were they when Equilibrium came out) and pacing.  I guess you can include that in The Case Against Critics.  Now it’s my turn.  I only watched this movie once in the theatre ten years ago on the same day as WALL-E (guess which one I liked more), but that’s not gonna stop me.
        Wanted is a loose adaptation of a Mark Millar comic in which a man joins a Fraternity of supervillains who secretly control the world.  From what little I’ve gathered, it has clever ideas, but seems to be edgy for the sake of it.  The film’s protagonist, Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), works a thankless dead-end office job.  He is harassed by his overweight boss Janice (Lorna Scott), and his shrewish girlfriend Cathy (Kristen Hager) is cheating on him with his friend Barry (Chris Pratt).  The movie strains to make Wesley as cheaply relatable as it can, and emphasizes this with montages set the rather well-selected Nine Inch Nails song “Every Day Is Exactly the Same.”  He frequently suffers from panic attacks, which are later revealed to be significant.
      Wesley is one day accosted by Fox (Angelina Jolie), who tells him that he is a destined super assassin and that his real father Mr. X (David O’Hara) was recently murdered by a rogue killer named Cross (Thomas Kretschmann).  No sooner does this revelation occur that Cross attacks them, and Wesley is spirited away during the gunfight.  He is introduced to Sloan (Morgan Freeman), the leader of The Fraternity, a secret society of heroic assassins who kill people in order to maintain civilization’s order.  Sloan interprets messages in the printing errors from an old loom (a clever idea), and gives targets to his assassins.  When Wesley questions this and gets cold feet on an early job, Fox tells him about how a loved one died because a member of the Fraternity refused to carry out an order.  This does effectively show how she is a believer in the cause and foreshadows her actions in the movie’s climax.
       Wesley’s training is brutal.  He is introduced to “The Repairman” (Marc Warren), who “repairs” bad habits from new recruits by beating the s*** out of them.  He also meets a knife expert named “The Butcher” (Dato Bakhtadze), a gun expert named “The Gunsmith” (Common), and befriends an explosives expert named “The Exterminator” (Konstantin Khabensky), who shows him how to use rats to deliver bombs.  During one shootout, this character is accidentally killed.
        The Fraternity tells Wesley that his panic attacks are actually a symptom of a superpower that enables him to have extreme perception and reflexes.  I would love this to be the twist with Buster’s anxiety in Arrested Development; it might actually get me to watch the 5th season.  He is primarily taught how to “curve the bullet.”  This action involves moving the gun in such a way that it causes the bullet to twist precisely in mid-air.  Unrealistic as hell, but cool.  This had the potential to be the most innovative action trope since Gun Kata had the movie emphasized choreography over tacky camera gimmicks.   As I already pointed out, I really hate it when action scenes slow down and speed up for no reason other than looking cool, and it annoys me like shaky-cam annoys others.  You can do that to highlight a dramatic moment in the action, but otherwise It takes you out of the action and makes it seem like the movie has a bad transmission.  The trope was fresh and cleverly used by The Matrix, and any movie that uses it looks like some cheap rip-off.  By this time Zack Snyder and Bekmambetov were the only people insisting on using this trope.  I’d like to appropriate a term from James Rolfe by calling it “Two-Gear Diarrhea.”                                                    
        The action does have its moments, though (mostly already seen in the trailers).  Mr. X’s rush through the glass is cool, Fox’s driving a car with her feet while shooting is cool, Wesley's shooting the wings off a fly is cool, and what Wesley does to the Repairman is cool.  Unfortunately, the movie often uses tacky guitar riffs to ruin the action. 
        Another problem with the action is the gratuitous use of CG blood.  I understand that CG blood saves time on clean-up and that it is okay when the action is edited well enough as to not emphasize it too much.  It’s another thing entirely when the movie lovingly shoots the CG blood in slow motion so wecan appreciate just how fake it looks.
      An interesting stylistic trait is the use of the occasional antique firearm, including what seems to be a magazine-fed wheellock.  Sloan gives Wesley a beautifully customized Beretta that supposedly belonged to his father and utters a remarkably bad attempt at hyperbole by saying that “he could conduct a symphony orchestra with it.”  Usually you’re supposed to exaggerate talent with something that’s implausible, like saying that someone is such a good shot that he could carve a Renaissance sculpture just by shooting at a block of marble.  But conducting a symphony orchestra with a gun would simply be the same thing as normal conducting except you’re holding a gun instead of a baton.  Marksmanship is irrelevant.  It says less about your skills as a conductor and more about the nerve of musicians that can still play competently in the presence of a crazy person waving a gun at them.
      Wesley eventually tracks Cross down through one of the latter’s accomplices, Pekwarsky (Terence Stamp), and he eventually kills him, only for Cross to reveal to him in his dying moments that he is actually his real father.  Kinda like a certain far better movie, except lame and derivative.  Pekwarsky tells Wesley that Sloan began to commission kills for profit after his own name came up in the loom.  Angered by this and The Fraternity’s using him to kill his own father (who would be reluctant to shoot back), Wesley infiltrates their headquarters using the explosive rats as a sentimental nod to the Exterminator and shoots his way through the place.  When he calls Sloan out, the latter admits to his deception and all the other assassins agree to go along with it.  This is the high point of the entire movie because the usually stoic Morgan Freeman executes a perfectly timed F-Bomb which works because it’s so unexpected.  The exception is Fox, who curves a bullet that kills herself and everyone in the room except Wesley and Sloan.  Eventually Sloan tracks Wesley down to his workplace only to find a decoy, and then utters a rather forced curse word.  The bullet that kills him is traced back miles away to reveal Wesley, who’s rambling on about how he’s taken control of his life and turning it into a power fantasy.  The movie ends with his obnoxiously breaking the Fourth Wall and arrogantly asking the viewer, “What the f*** have you done lately?”
       This illustrates a problem with the movie’s tone and themes.  It’s incongruous for the movie to pander so shamelessly to the audience as this movie does only to tell if off like that.  It’s not even the type of intellectual work that would earn that move.  It also seems to talk down to us by accident in a scene in which Wesley exacts revenge on Barry by hitting him with a keyboard, causing the message “F*** YOU” to be spelled out by flying keys and a tooth.  It doesn’t work because Barry can’t see the message himself, but the audience does. 
        Wish fulfillment fiction works best when it appeals to the desire to be powerful enough to help others, not oneself.  It doesn’t really work if it appeals to wrong values or self-centeredness.  It’s also unfortunate that the movie argues that the Fraternity has been doing good work with its extreme consequentialist murders.  While there is a thin veneer of Might for Right that defines all good action movies, Wanted is primarily preoccupied with the more selfishly motivated wish fulfillment of Wesley Gibson.  His triumph is over his own vulnerability and those he felt persecuted by.  While he did defeat a group of corrupt murderers, it’s unclear where he goes from there.  Wesley’s petty preoccupations are illustrated by how the bullet he curves to kill Sloan also trolls his civilian tormentors.  One of his own personal victories occurs when he gets backed up by Fox when confronting his girlfriend.  The implication is that this is an own because Fox is the more attractive woman, but it doesn’t work for me because, while I’ve always respected Jolie as an actress, she was never my type.  This tone ultimately prevented this movie from being passably enjoyable while detracting from the talented James McAvoy’s usual likability. 
         Wanted is my least favorite movie of 2008.  Then again, it may illustrate how good a year that was for movies because by Worst Movie I’ve Seen This Year standards it was above average.  It was still rather bad.  So much so that its weakness are still apparent to me after a full decade.  An a positive note, it does have a good score by Danny Elfman.

QUOTES

WESLEY: It's my anorexic boss' birthday. This means there's a certain amount of inter-office pressure to stand around the conference table, eating crappy food and pretending to worship her. Acting for five minutes like Janice doesn't make all our lives miserable is the hardest work I'll do all day.

WESLEY:  My father wasn’t a traitor This is a kill order.  It’s got Sloan’s name on it.  What did you say to me?  It’s a name.  It’s-it’s a target.  I don’t want this person dead.  Fate does. [chuckles] Fate wanted you dead.  And he couldn't’take it.  So he started manufacturing his own targets for his own gains.  And that’s when my dad found out and decided to stand against him.  And that’s when you sent a man’s son to kill his father.  You’re not an assassin of Fate, Sloan, you’re just a thug who can bend bullets.
FOX: Is that true?
SLOAN: Here is what the truth is.  [to the Gunsmith] Your name came up. [to Fox] Your name came up. [to the rest] Your name came up.  Your name.  Your name.  Yours.  Everyone in this room.  If I had not done what I did, you would all be dead.  I saved your lives.  Now look where we are.  We are stronger than ever.  Changing the course of history as we see it.  Choosing the targets we select.  We can redistribute power where we see fit.  The wolves rule.  Not the sheep.  Now if any of you feel the need to follow the Code of the Fraternity to the letter, I invite you to take your gun, put it in your mouth, and pull the trigger.  That is what Wesley demands.  Otherwise, shoot THIS MOTHERF***ER and let us take our Fraternity of Assassins to heights reserved only for the gods of men.

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