Wanted

Wanted, an action film from Timur Bekmambetov, received two Oscar nominations in the sound categories. This is par for the course, as those categories are usually dominated by films with a high number of bullets fired, cars crashed, and bombs exploded. Wanted has those in great abundance, and gleefully goes about defying the laws of physics.

James McAvoy plays an office drone with a horrible girlfriend and a worse boss. He takes pills for stress, but soon finds himself being recruited by Angelina Jolie, who tells him that he is the son of a legendary assassin, a member of a thousand-year-old organization called "The Fraternity", which has been correcting the balance of power in the world over the centuries. She tells him all of his after whisking him through the city in a sports car, being chased by another assassin, with a fusillade of bullets and flipped vehicles. If you couldn't tell, this film is based on a comic book (unknown to me).

Eventually McAvoy accepts his destiny and is trained in a way that makes Marine boot camp seem easy. The greatest trick these killers employ is giving their wrist a twist when they shoot a gun, which makes bullets curve around obstacles. Surely Isaac Newton is spinning in his grave.

For all of its cheerful stupidity, Wanted is decent entertainment. Bekmambetov directs as if a gun is being held to his head, as the excess is piled miles high. At times this brought a smile to my face, as when McAvoy smacks someone in the face with a computer keyboard and the keys fly apart, spelling out the words "Fuck You" (actually, the last U is made up of a bicuspid of the guy getting hit). Jolie looks great, even if she isn't asked to say much, and this role must have appealed to her because she didn't need to cover her tattoos. Also on hand is Morgan Freeman, dignified as ever, as the leader of The Fraternity. There's even a nice plot twist that I didn't see coming.