DVD: Wanted

By: Eli Turner Posted: January 11, 2009

No, you don't get to see Angelina Jolie's butt (and she's really kinda weird looking and unattractive anyway).

If not seeing Angelina Jolie's butt (despite what all the trailers imply) turns you away from an inventive, visually spectacular film, then perhaps Wanted isn't for you. Then again, neither is life, because you probably didn't see her butt yesterday either and yet you still got out of bed, got dressed, and confronted me at my video store to complain about paying a buck and change for keeping a movie three weeks past due. So why wouldn't you see this movie, then? I'm so glad you asked.

Timur Bekmambetov, the director of Night Watch, Day Watch, and the Yet-to-be-name-time-of-day Watch films, has an original imagination. His shooting cuts disorientingly from shaky extreme close-ups to static medium shots and back, but it all works somehow and his movies are cooler for it. Wanted is no exception. Also, Konstantin Khabenskiy plays a moderately-sized role in the movie, and when I cheered for his appearance in the theater, the people around me eyed me nervously. Apparently all those bastards in the dark haven't seen Night Watch (which rocks your mom's socks, by the way). Now that the praise is out of the way, I'm on to far more fun fares.

If Lord of War were a sauce, and that sauce could be reduced, and then that reduction would be the first act of this movie. Wesley's (James McAvoy) "witty" running commentary on his life wears out its welcome faster than a German at an Austrian Nationalist Rally, and his smarmy attitude which was clearly intended to make the audience hate his life as much as he did really just made me hate him. When he finally stood up to his boss, I felt like I was watching Office Space as written by Mike Judge's retarded, F-word-loving alter-ego. It was not cathartic, at least not to me.

The pacing of the film had issues, too. The training phase of Wesley's, um, training, lasted too long into the movie. It was almost the third act before he even learned how to really be an assasin. I was hoping for a brief training phase followed by some training-in-action portion of the film followed by the complication of the plot, but the training was mixed in with the training in action, and a lot of the training ended up being inconsequential to the story. Except, of course, the bullet curving.

When they first curved a bullet in this movie, I'll admit, I thought it was pretty awesome. By the third or fourth time, I was ready for it to go away for awhile before making a grand re-entrance at the end to save the day. But this did not happen. Not only did the bullet-curving continue, it became requisite for a character, every time he or she fired his or her gun, to curve the bullet. Sure, a few time it could be considered necessary to bend the path of the bullet around a curved building to hit the target, but when there are two characters standing about ten feet from each other with an unobstructed view, is it really necessary to curve the bullets? One of the more redeeming and original aspects of this movie was worn out to the point where within the span of one film a cool concept has been introduced and used up to the point of becoming cliche. IN THE SPAN OF ONE MOVIE!

The action is well-constructed and exciting, and the effects and assassinations (save for the latter half's bullet-bending) were entertaining and original. Unfortunately, the dialogue and acting was far less stellar, so much so that I think this film would be immeasurably more entertaining if it were completely devoid of its dialogue and were just a film of sound effects and spectacular visuals... and Angelina Jolie's butt.

Special Features:

• Cast and Characters
• Stunts on the L Train
• Special Effects: The Art of the Impossible
• Groundbreaking Visual Effects: From Imagination to Execution
• The Origins of Wanted: Bringing the Graphic Novel to Life
• Through the Eyes of Visionary Director Timur Bekmambetov
• Feature on the making of the video game
• Wanted: Motion Comics
• Extended scene
• Digital copy of the film