Wanted is a 2008 action film, very loosely based on the comic book miniseries of the same name by Mark Millar. The film is written by Chris Morgan, Michael Brandt, and Derek Haas, directed by Timur Bekmambetov, and stars James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Thomas Kretschmann, Common, Terence Stamp, and Konstantin Khabensky. The storyline follows Wesley Gibson (McAvoy), a frustrated accountant who discovers that he is the son of a professional assassin and decides to join The Fraternity, the secret guild in which his father worked.

Production began in April 2007, with filming in the Czech Republic to later superimpose the sets on images of Chicago. Wanted was released on June 25, 2008 in the United Kingdom and two days later in the United States, to both critical and commercial success. It was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing.

Comparisons to Shoot 'Em Up and Crank have me befuddled why critics are loving it. Perhaps the presence of Morgan Freeman confused them....?

Comparisons to Shoot 'Em Up and Crank have me befuddled why critics are loving it. Perhaps the presence of Morgan Freeman confused them....?

WANTED is a disgusting film that obviously should have been rated NC-17 for its obnoxious level of gross and excessive violence. Human bodies are beaten to a pulp like slabs of raw meat. The MPAA failed us again, worrying about sex and nudity in other films, which are normal, but ignoring massive levels of inhumane violence in movies like WANTED.

But, even if the movie were properly rated, it would still be absolutely awful. One of the worst films of the year, it possesses almost no original ideas. Instead, it rips off other movies, taking their signature features and twisting them to ridiculous levels. This is seen most of all in the way it takes the body and bullet moves of THE MATRIX and tries to amplify them a hundredfold, making them look outlandish and just plain stupid.

Actually, you can probably forget everything I've said, that is, if you are like most members of our theater audience. In what I think of as the BATTLEFIELD EARTH phenomenon, some movies are so atrocious that it becomes downright fun to laugh at them. Listening to viewers later, the oft-heard refrain was that, sure the movie stunk, but it was still fun laughing at its inanities. While I was cringing in disgust during the movie, most of my audience found its ridiculous moments entertaining. Personally, I was ready to run out screaming after thirty minutes.

The plot concerns a mysterious and nefarious organization known as "The Fraternity." This secretive group has been around for over a thousand years. They are a band of blood-thirsty assassins, who, we are told, only kill those deserving of death. Gosh, don't you feel better already? These murderers won't bother you. They'll just go after the guy next door, who doesn't recycle like he should. Actually, we don't know how they go about deciding who deserves death. What we do know is how the assassins are given their missions, which is pretty silly.

The film's editor is obsessed with showing off what he can do in post-production by including the maximum amount of slo-mo, speed-ups, freeze frames and instant rewinds. These techniques are so overused that it could make any movie almost unwatchable. Of course, WANTED isn't just any movie. It's a really bad one, made even worse by its overly clever editor.

Most of the movie has members of the fraternity shooting at each other. These world-class marksmen -- and women, most notably the film's headline star Angelina Jolie -- manage to almost never be able to hit each other. Rather than being the world's best shots, they frequently appear to be the worst. When they do get close to wounding each other, the bullets collide in mid-air. This happens again and again, ad nauseam.

The story concerns the training of the Fraternity's newest member, Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy). He is recruited by Fox (Jolie) to kill the killer of the father he never knew. It turns out that Wesley has Fraternity blood in him, so that, when asked to shoot the wings off of flies, he discovers, to his considerable surprise, that he can do it the first time he tries. He also finds that he is at heart a sadistic and violent man. He has such anger issues that, when he goes back to work, he breaks a keyboard over the face of a coworker he never liked. The poor guy's face is pulverized and some of his teeth are knocked out.

This consistently mean-spirited movie has perhaps a single saving grace. Wesley comes up with an ingenious scheme to storm a veritable fortress of killers. But, although inventive, the scheme is telegraphed way in advance, blunting the cuteness of its effect.

I found the movie painful to endure. If I had not been there to review the film, there is no question about what I would have done. I would have walked out. The only issue is how much pain I would have put up with before giving up on the movie. Do yourself a big favor and never walk in in the first place.

The Bad reviews are ridiculous, Just as they were for Jumper. Wanted is Grade A entertainment, a non stop roller coaster ride of pure awesomeness. The film delivered everything it promised in the trailers and more.

BJs Grade:

B+

Go watch the fucking movie.

So why did you give it a B+?

Ignore Wall-E, go see this.

***1/2

FUCKING. AWESOME.

This is a summer popcorn flick. Pure adrenaline rush to the max. I'm glad this film didn't punk out and go with a PG-13. The action sequences in this are so freakin' cool. Nothing terribly new, yet it still blew me away. I actually really dug the plot as well. Angelina Jolie kicked ass and Morgan Freeman is a complete badass. Wanted is really stylish, incredibly entertaining, pretty damn funny ("...or you can kill this mother fucker..." - Morgan Freeman, Wesley in the office when he quits, etc.), and one of the best films of the year.

Ignore Wall-E, go see this.

***1/2

Honestly, the R-rating didn't do that much. Most of the cursing didn't add much except for the "kill this mother fucker" part. And it wasn't really that gory. This could have easily been PG-13 and I would have given it the same rating. I still think it was a stupid decision (business wise) to NOT go PG-13.