Review: Wanted

While reading the autobiography of professional wrestler Chris Jericho earlier this week, I learned a new term: ricockulous. This is the term for an event or object so indescribably unusual, bizarre and/or awesome that merely calling it ridiculous will not suffice. While watching "Wanted," this term repeatedly popped into my head. For example: the film opens with an assassin running through an office building in slow motion, lunging through the glass window and flying through the air to the next building over, while laying waste to a half-dozen assassins.

From this description alone, you probably have a pretty good idea of whether this movie is going to be your cup of tea or not. From the point of view of somebody who adores movies like "Shoot 'Em Up" and "Crank," this is an absolute thrill. I personally would like to think that, when director Timur Bekmambetov (say that ten times fast) pitched this movie to Universal Studios, the conversation went something like this:

Timur: Okay, so the movie is kinda like "The Matrix," but it's going to be a lot more violent, and we're going to find everything that makes action movies awesome, and throw it together.
Studio Executives: Like?
Timur: Check this shit out: Angelina Jolie's gonna be in it, and she just has to be hot and shoot people the whole time. And then, we're gonna do the bullet-time thing, but now people can curve bullets, and they can shoot each other's bullets out of the air with their bullets. Then, Morgan Freeman's going to be a complete badass...
Studio Executives: Wait. Just last summer, he was God in "Evan Almighty." How are we supposed to believe him as a killer?
Timur: Have him utter the word "motherfucker." It worked for Sam Jackson.
Studio Executives: Fair enough. Now, who's gonna be the lead?
Timur: That wussy-looking guy from "Atonement." Trust me, though. He's gonna be a beast by the end of the film.
Studio Executives: This is getting fast-tracked. Immediately.

The film essentially follows Wesley (James McAvoy), a miserable office drone whose only concern in life is his total apathy towards everything. His boss treats him like dirt, his best friend is blatantly nailing his girlfriend and he works in a cubicle, where his only daily entertainment is Googling himself and finding nothing. This all changes one night, when Fox (Jolie) shows up and saves him from an assassin out to kill him. This leads to Wesley being inducted into The Fraternity, an ancient squad of assassins that his now-deceased father joined.

As is the case with most movies like this, all is not as it seems, but the film is not about plot. It is about Wesley taking control of his life as he becomes a killing machine. This is done far better than the average action movie: we see enough of Wesley as a working stiff and then as a killer to come to actually care what happens to him. This investment in character also pays off in the last scene, which is reminiscent of both the music video for Korn's "Freak On A Leash" and the final monologue of "Trainspotting," and is a crowd-pleasing final screw-you sequence on the highest level.

The action, which is the true purpose of the movie, is incredible. The film takes its R rating and uses it to swing for the fences; at the beginning and end of a film, we see a bullet fly through a character's head, blood and all, only to fly backwards through the head in order to see its trajectory. Bekmambetov, who directed the highly popular Russian "Night Watch" series, has the kind of hyperkinetic style necessary for a film like this. He also takes Chicago and makes it look alternately like an urban wonderland and a sewer; the only continuity error comes in when the El is made to look like a bullet train.

In a summer where "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk" have already upped the action film ante, "Wanted" manages to raise the bar yet again. It is, in a word, ricockulous.