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.
