The IG and I aren't really hanging out anymore, so I've been engaging in a variety of different recreational activities, both to amuse myself and to fill up the time. One has been an increase in movie watching, and since I still feel inexplicably-compelled to write reviews for almost every book and/or film I consume, and I've got at least 40 or 50 mostly-finished reviews on my notes page, it would probably be wise to expect (Anticipate? Dread?) a fairly regular stream of them coming up in blog posts.
You have been warned.
First up comes this review of Wanted, which I viewed for the first time just yesterday afternoon.
Wanted. A fairly low-rent assassin action film starring Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, and some shlubby white guy you'll forget the moment he steps off the screen.
That said, I kind of enjoyed it. I expected it to be terrible but have some wacky stunts and scenes, and it pretty well lived up to that. It had a bit more story than I expected, and while the "curve the bullet" stuff was absurd, the whole movie is such a cartoon that I could suspend disbelief while watching.
Disclaimer. I watched this the day before my birthday, while I was very drunk and in a giddy mood. I'm fairly sure I wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much in my right mind, and I've got no desire to watch it again, sober or not, to find out.
Wanted, 2008
Script/Story: 7
Acting/Casting: 4
Action: 8
Eye Candy: 5
Fun Factor: 6
Replayability: 3
Overall: 6.5
I'm not saying it was any good, but it had some memorably-inventive scenes, and the concept was cool. Cooler than it was good, and better in concept than in execution. The plot is that this average office worker guy is having some Fight Club-like ennui with life, and he's therefore pretty happy to be suddenly recruited into a secret "brotherhood" of assassins. He gets more or less abducted by Angelina Jolie, as she saves him from an evil assassin who defected from the brotherhood. (Yes, there are women in the brotherhood. Angie, at least.)
She tells the guy that his long-lost father was one of their better assassins, and that he was just killed by the defector guy. And that the only one with the natural talent to kill the defector is the new guy. So he learns to shoot and rides around Chicago on the top of the subway, occasionally shooting people. He eventually finds out that their targets are assigned by the "Loom of Fate." Which is where things get ridiculous.
The Loom is just that. A huge, cloth-weaving machine that appears to make an endless length of beige sheeting. They cut little rectangles out of the sheet, examine them with a magnifying glass, assign a 0 or a 1 to places where the weave is irregular, translate the lines into binary code, and those form names. The names are their next targets. None of this is ever questioned or explained.
This movie doesn't exist in some sort of Hellboy or Night Watch universe, with magic and spells and super human creatures. (Though
the comic book it's based on certainly does.) It's totally realistic and grounded in reality, aside from some physics-defying shooting (curving bullets and impossibly long sniper shots) and driving stunts. Yet there's this prophetic spinning wheel (the hero does prick his finger on it at one point, but sadly he does not fall into a hundred year sleep) that no one seems to find unusual or even very special.
Personally, if I were the kid that would be the thing that most perplexed me. I could deal with the fact that the father I never met was an assassin, and that I was destined to take his place, that I was being trained by a secret organization, etc. But a loom that spits out names in binary code, and that those people are destined to do great evil if they're not killed immediately? That would shatter the foundations of my world. How did they find out that the loom could do that? Who first started magnifying glass'ing the cloth, counting the threads, and getting names in binary code from it? Furthermore, how is this thing powered? Is there a demon in the machinery? Is it God? A doorway to another universe?
Questions... never discussed, or even mentioned, in the film. Yes, suspension of disbelief is required pretty much as soon as the opening credits start to roll.
Needless to say, the plot takes a few twists. We find out that the brotherhood has been corrupted, that the defector isn't actually who he seems to be, and the hero guy has to decide which side he's going to stand with, etc, etc. There are a million holes in the logic and in the actions of the principles, but it's not a movie to analyze on an intellectual level. I didn't care that it made no sense, and didn't care about the characters or plot developments anyway. And frankly, you won't either, no matter how much (or little) rum, vodka, and/or Goldschlager you've got in you when you watch the movie. Just enjoy the shooting and the stunts and try not to think.
Don't think about sexy time or titties though, since R-rated or not, you won't get any of that. Wanted was directed by the Russian guy who did the visionary Night Watch films, and it's got some similarities to those movies. It's much, much, much toned down and made more conventional, with immeasurably less weirdness and creativity. But its similar in the speed of the events, the way the characters react (very no-nonsense and without introspection), and it's got some fairly inventive violence and action scenes. But there's zero sexiness. Typical American action film, in that regard.
Angelina is basically the only woman in the movie, and she's never sexy. In fact, she's emaciated. Painfully. To the point of being unattractive. I suppose this was filmed while she was in her post-partum starving herself phase, but it would have been nice if they could have CGI'ed some meat on her bones. Or at least dressed her better. She's in cargo style clothing the whole time, with a belt that looks like she's had to punch about 4 more holes as her waist has shrunk. In one early scene she's inexplicably wearing an evening gown, but she's so bony she might as well be a coat hanger holding it up. She never does anything sexy, and she's so thin her cheeks and eyes are hollowed. They don't help that by spraying on the raccoon eyes makeup, making her look unfortunately like an older, brunette Olsen Twin.
There's no romance or love or even affection in the movie, and while they do give us one scene of naked Angelina, it's pointlessly brief. She gets out of a healing tank/bathtub thing, but you only see her once she's already out, and they only show her back, from well above the waist. And all In noticed were the temporary tattoos they added to augment her real ones, and the anatomy class display of ribs tentingthrough her skin.
On the whole, I think this movie was about as good as it could have been. Even though it wasn't very good. Often, I finish an action movie with many thoughts about how much better it could have been with some smarter scenes, better action, character changes, etc. This one isn't like that. It works as well as it could have, with what it had to work with. The ingredients are just too much of a mishmash for it to be improved without reworking it into another film entirely. It is what it is.
Labels: movie review
