I had the great misfortune to see “Wanted” last night

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I went to see Wanted last night.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?

This is a popular movie starring actors I like with a 72% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. WHY DID IT MAKE MY BRAIN LEAK OUT OF MY EARS?

It's like, um, if you took the scripts for The Matrix, Fight Club, Spiderman, and The Empire Strikes Back, chopped them into little pieces, fed them to a monkey on crack, and then filmed the parts the monkey vomited back up... it would be this movie.

NONE OF IT MADE THE TINIEST BIT OF SENSE.

There's a loom. A MAGICAL LOOM OF FATE. I wasn't the only person in the theater cracking up at this. Apparently a thousand years ago the loom started spitting out names in code, and a bunch of violently-inclined weavers decided that their only choice was to form a secret society for the purpose of murdering every person whose name was spat out by the loom. Um, maybe it just wanted you to sell fabric to them? Murder would not be my first instinct at the discovery of a name embedded in fabric, but then, I'm not a medieval weaver obviously!

And the film itself can't decide what the hell it thinks of this. First, it's totally okay to murder someone based on a MAGIC LOOM. Then, wait, it's wrong, how horrible! YOU MORONS ARE MURDERING PEOPLE BASED ON A MAGIC LOOM, WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU? And then, oh wait, actually it's because the bad guy was manipulating the loom to put his own names in. So it's wrong to cheat the loom, but MURDERING PEOPLE BASED ON THE LOOM IS TOTALLY FINE.

Did I mention my brain was leaking out of my ears and my laughter was taking on an hysterical tinge?

And it's all couched in the terms of self-empowerment, taking control of your fate and living your life to the fullest. Which means MURDERING PEOPLE BASED ON A MAGIC LOOM.

Oh, oh, and a normal life leaves you bored and disaffected. Better to be a badass killer! Except, wait, being a badass killer actually sucks and you end up murdering your own father who just wanted you to have a normal life. Oops! Maybe a normal life would be preferable then? Except, no, actually killing people based on a magic loom is better after all! Because it's EMPOWERING. And uh, where the free will comes in when you're choosing to kill people based on the Loom OF FATE, I'm not exactly sure.

The script writers didn't even try to make sense. They have magical healing, solely for the purpose of showing their lead characters as bloodily fucked-up as possible and then having no bruises or broken bones in the next scene. They can bend bullets, and slow down time, and one guy can apparently fly, and there is no explanation given for any of this except some half-assed technobabble about an adrenaline rush being responsible for the slowed-down time. This movie is largely an excuse to show bullets shattering through human skulls in the slowest-motion possible. I'm not usually squeamish--Quentin Tarantino is one of my favorite directors--but this was obscene. The only point was "isn't it lovely to watch a human skull shattered by a bullet"? No, it's really not. And, btw, if you don't like seeing dead animals, don't watch this movie. In addition to the torturing of flies and a bunch of scenes with a hanging pig corpse, the climax involves hundreds of rats with bombs attached, I'm not kidding.

The characters are so shallowly drawn it's almost an insult to lump these transparent bits of nothing under the "character" label. There's Marc Warren, supremely creepy as always (at least that was a good bit of casting), who beats the main character up a lot and then not only gets a bullet through the skull but gets the gun wedged through his head, dragging his body along as the shooter continues to fire at other people. There's a guy with knives who says "pussy" a lot (in a obvious "twist," he dies via knife instead of bullet-through-skull), there's James McAvoy's poor girlfriend (apparently we're supposed to hate her for nagging and cheating on him, but, dude, given the way he behaves and treats her in the beginning, my sympathy was all with her), there's James McAvoy's best friend, who's an asshole just because (and violence is totally the solution for dealing with him and everyone else, of course), there's James McAvoy's bitchy overweight donut-eating boss (a cliche if I've ever seen one, and did I mention the misogyny?), there's James McAvoy's long-lost dad (he gets um, two lines?), there's Morgan Freeman, who's "evil" for thinking, hmm, perhaps following the whims of a MAGIC LOOM isn't such a great idea.

And there's Angelina Jolie, who's incredibly shallowly-drawn for a female lead. She had a fucked-up childhood and now she kills people because she's convinced that following the whims of the MAGIC LOOM OF FATE is a good idea. That's pretty much all there is to her character--looms and fate. She kills herself and her colleagues BECAUSE THE LOOM SAID SO. And we're supposed to find this heroic. Um.... (And I know Angelina Jolie can act, but clearly she's read the script and knows it's not worth the effort here. The entire character is as blank and without affect as you can get. Also, she's pretty and everything, but someone please feed her.)

And then there's James McAvoy. Who actually kind of hurts to write about because he's so, so good. All of that talent, wasted on this horrific monstrosity of a film. I hope he got a huge paycheck and that his career skyrockets based on this. He brings layers, depth, humanity, pathos; he makes the character utterly pathetic and he makes the character drop-dead smoking hot. He plays a convincing transformation from nobody to killer and is absolutely riveting for every second he's onscreen. His character is even written well in the beginning, depressed and bored and without purpose, but snarky and self-aware and thoroughly entertaining. A total Fight Club/Office Space ripoff, yes, but done well. And then he turns into your generic action movie killer. :(

It's James McAvoy's amazing performance that takes this travesty from "just another dumb summer movie that I wouldn't bother posting about" to a tragedy of wasted potential. If you haven't seen it yet, SPARE YOURSELF. Iron Man's still playing; go see it again. And if you're seeking a McAvoy fix, may I recommend State of Play?

Current Mood: disappointed

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