I've seen a lot of good films recently: In the last month I've seen The Dark Knight, Taxi Driver, Through a Glass, Darkly, Wall-E, and Yojimbo, but despite all of that the only movie I really want to talk about is Wanted.
Oh how I've been wanting to do that. So anyhow:
"You're not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank!" shouts Tyler Durden from atop a burning, paint-spattered building, or at least he does in my head as I try my good goddamnedest to ignore the oversaturated sarcasm that drips through James McAvoy's insipid voiceover.
Now it might be a stretch to say that Fight Club dealt with corporate drudgery and modern emasculation with a delicate hand, but the claim seems infinitely more reasonable after sitting through a hundred and ten minutes of Wanted, a male power fantasy so broad and stupid in its choices that blowing up credit card buildings becomes sensible in comparison.
The problem isn't that Wanted wants to be Fight Club, the problem is that Wanted never bothers to understand the nuanced of the film. It asks similar questions (what is the role of masculinity in a society that seemingly discourages it? Is violence the answer? What is the second rule of wait a minute now) but rather than discussing the various angles it simply pulls back on the trigger and screams "Yes!"
Of course, any one who saw the movie and drank it up is probably wondering what I'm going on about, since Wanted really only bothers with these sort of issues in its first act and a little in the last. "Noah J.," you might say, "why worry about all of these high-falutin' thematic notions when all we really want is a whiz-bang action extravaganza?" Well I'm glad you asked me that, me, and since I'm asking I might as well tell you- Wanted can't even deliver well on that front.
Take for example the first real action sequence, the shoot-out in a grocery store leading to an absurd car chase. As far as consistency goes, these scenes fail to make any sense; why is Fox (Angelina Jolie) using a gun-on-a-swivel when she can supposedly bend bullets? Okay, I'm nitpicking, but be honest- can you really enjoy the flow of an action scene when every few seconds James McAvoy screams jesus christ and goddammit, neatly translating the crash bang crescendos into annoying little bits of ugly syncopation. Barring even annoyance, it's difficult to avoid that deja-vu feeling that seems to crop up every few minutes in the film, that little voice in the back of your head that says "haven't I seen this before?"
Maybe it would be quieter if the special effects didn't rip every genuinely interesting stunt from the Matrix CliffNotes. It can't even get that right either, opting to explain every moment of its physics raping action bloodfest with heightened adrenaline, instead of, say, super powers, which might be less realistic (ha ha ha) but at least the film wouldn't be breaking its own rules every thirty-five seconds.
Admittedly, Wanted is adapted from a comic book, and the comic book was one of those unfortunate okay-at-best sort of ventures, so themes and consistency and rule breaking could maybe be forgiven, even a little bit, but nope, they have to go ahead and make the Loom of Fate.
Let me repeat that for you. The Loom of Fate.
Writer: Okay, so I've gotten everything worked out, I think. We take the supervillains and make them assassins, we take the super-powers and make them adrenaline stuff-
Producer: Adrenaline?
Writer: It's stupid but it'll hold. It's an action movie, right?
Producer: Okay, okay.
Writer: We just need something to hold it all together, a unifier.
Producer: How about weaving?
Writer: Um... weaving? I- uh. [a pause, the noise of shuffling papers] Hm... well maybe, actually. Like, a secret society behind a legitimate front? That might actually work.
Producer: What if they got their assignments from a giant automated loom that they read the names of targets from?
Writer: Pardon?
See Wanted if you enjoy watching things explode. If you seek not to waste your time and money on a half-assed ripoff of other movies' points and particulars, and are not yet convinced, allow me to reiterate, and please, understand just how dumb this is.
The Loom of Fate. The Loom of Fate.
the loom of fate
yours,
Noah J.
p.s.: sorry for the rambles.
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