Lessons in badass

I think it’s been said way too many times on this blog that I absolutely adore James McAvoy, so I won’t say it, although I will imply it zillions of times in the post to come. I think this guy is the next big movie star, if he isn’t already. After Wanted, he’s now probably the most wanted actor in the biz. He’s shown himself to be extremely versatile, jumping from drama to action to romantic comedy effortlessly and with no compromises. He seems to be the kind of actor who wouldn’t take a role for the star power but for the substance. His performance in The Last King of Scotland was absolutely brilliant, and he was so moving in Becoming Jane. In Wanted, he was able to tap into the action star in him and unleash a totally different character: Wesley Gibson – an office nobody who hates his job, knows his best friend is sleeping with his girlfriend, and is being plagued by anxiety attacks. He’s the quintessential action hero in that he’s the unlikely hero that we all know and love – a staple in action hero movies like The Matrix wherein a nobody who is completely dissatisfied with his life is suddenly “chosen” to save the world. McAvoy is great as the blubbering, self-loathing Wesley and it was fun to watch him get into that character.

James McAvoy is chosen as an assassin for The Fraternity

Based on the graphic novel of the same name, the movie is basically about a group of assassins who call themselves The Fraternity – individuals who have been tasked to eliminate people who are predicted by some kind of magical loom to pose a threat in the future; kind of like Minority Report. Wesley is plucked out of his mundane existence by Angelina Jolie’s character, Fox, and recruited into The Fraternity, where he is trained and beaten the crap out of in order for him to become one of them.

Angelina Jolie puts on her game face as the fearless Fox

Wanted is a good movie if you want something thrilling and action-packed. It definitely aims to elicit oohs and aahs from an audience and throws the word “fuck” around a lot (although never as much as Pulp Fiction or that Limp Bizkit song), which is fine except it almost sounds redundant in some of Wesley’s lines. Angelina Jolie was pretty awesome in a role she probably feels at home with. Her character, Fox, is a woman with a tragic past and who is in The Fraternity because she believes it is the right thing to do, and she does not question it. Jolie steals every scene she is in and looks absolutely amazing toting guns and knocking over cars. She is riveting and you can’t keep your eyes off her, even though I did come to the theater for McAvoy.

Another star of the movie was Morgan Freeman, who didn’t really portray anything else other than, well, Morgan Freeman. The movie never had a dull moment, which is a plus, but it was lacking substance and depth in character. It was all testosterone and nothing cerebral. Sure, the premise is definitely a brain-scratcher. Would you kill someone if you knew they were going to do something evil in the future? Would you stamp out the embers before it became a raging fire? It’s a good question to pose, but isn’t exactly explored in detail in the film. There are a few moments where Wesley doubts if he is doing the right thing, but not enough, in my opinion, for a guy who was just plucked out of an ordinary existence.

Wanted is a good movie in that it fulfills our escapist fantasies as an audience. You completely forget that you’ve been sitting in the theater for a little under two hours, and you are constantly smirking everytime Wesley whines and moans about his life. It does try to step into the same shoes that The Matrix once owned, because the special effects department tries to incorporate the same slo-mo wow-I’m-shooting-everyone-by-myself-but-they-can’t-hit-me-at-all-because-I’m-the-chosen-one tactics that The Matrix employed in 1999. The fact is, there can’t be another movie like The Matrix. The Matrix came at a time when sci-fi was comprised of spaceships and light sabers and not gravity-defying jumps and bullet-evading back bends. But if you’re looking for badass, then Wanted definitely has it.