| WANTED (2008) : T.Bekmambetov : 6/10 |
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 Two things that are always "wanted" by Hollywood: a hot new leading man, and a hot new action-movie director. Universal seek to cover both bases simultaneously with Wanted, a deliriously silly tale of super-assassins which brings together fast-rising Scottish actor James McAvoy (ubiquitous in recent British cinema before achieving international profile via Atonement) and director Timur Bekmambetov, whose hyperkinetic Night Watch and Day Watch have been among the most lucrative Russian productions, both domestically and abroad. McAvoy and Bekmambetov's career trajectories give an added extra-textual dimension to the plot of their movie, which sees accountant Wesley Gibson (McAvoy) exchanging his humdrum daily existence for a head-spinning world of glamour, magic, mystery, danger and opportunity (pretty similar to the set-up of Night Watch, come to think of it.) Indeed, when Gibson delightedly discovers that his bank-balance has swollen overnight from almost zero to several million, it doesn't take too much imagination to envisage both McAvoy and Bekmambetov experiencing similar pleasure when surveying their own financial horizons in the light of Wanted's likely success. And Bekmambetov has certainly tailored the movie to suit a precise and lucrative target demographic: young males aged between 15 and 25, who will undoubtedly get a major kick out of the string of wildly elaborate action-sequences which punctuate the narrative. Working from a script by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan, Bekmambetov doesn't so much relegate plausibility to the back seat as knock it senseless and lock it in the boot of a speeding sports-car as it hurtles off a cliff. This isn't a major problem so long as we're diverted by the eye-popping set-pieces - most of which involve Angelina Jolie as seductive super-assassin Fox - although it does become more of a nagging issue during the "down-time" when characters and audience alike are able to catch a breath or two. Brandt, Haas and Morgan have loosely adapted the US-published six-part graphic-novel series of the same title - written by Mark Millar (a Scot, now resident of McAvoy's native Glasgow, as it happens) and illustrated by J G Jones (American) - and in the process dispensed with its most intriguing element, namely the idea that the planet has for decades been run by a cabal of super-villains after they ganged together and got rid of all the super-heroes. What we're left with focusses more intently on the original Wanted's main protagonist Gibson, who discovers that his father was one of the world's top assassins, and that it's his destiny to follow in his blood-stained footsteps. This involves joining The Fraternity, a mystical, millennium-old society of weavers-cum-assassins whose targets are revealed to them by intense scrutiny of the "Loom of Fate." This backstory is revealed via complex, mumbo-jumbo exposition which not even Morgan Freeman - as the Fraternity's shadowy leader Sloan - can prevent from sounding utterly ludicrous, though the loom itself is a rather fetching and nicely old-school creation. Much has been made of Wanted's resemblances to Fight Club (Wesley's brutal training, which he eventually comes to enjoy) and The Matrix, but the picture also owes a considerable debt to the only two of Morgan's scripts which have previously reached the screen, underrated pair Cellular (2004) and The Fast and the Furious - Tokyo Drift (2006) both of which involve "ordinary" young men forced by circumstance into extraordinary behaviour. Wanted is ultimately a little less satisfactory than either, partly because McAvoy lacks the engaging charisma of Tokyo Drift's Lucas Black, partly because neither Cellular nor Tokyo Drift present their heroes' merits as anything to do with their biological ancestry. In Wanted, however, we're only a step away from the Skywalker family's Midichlorian-cell magic - the underlying message favouring heredity over environment every time. It's a theme that recurs with surprising frequency in American cinema - suggesting that, even 200 years after independence and supposed meritocracy, old-world notions of aristocracy and 'noble' blood remain extremely hard to kill. Neil Young 6.July.08 MORE FROM SUMMER '08 -------------------------------------------------------------------- USA(/Ger) 110m (BBFC timing) director : Timur Bekmambetov (The Irony of Fate 2, Day Watch, Night Watch, etc) editors : David Brenner (World Trade Center, The Day After Tomorrow, Identity, etc) Dallas Puett (Redline, The Marine, The Fast and the Furious - Tokyo Drift, etc) seen 3.July.08 Sunderland (Empire cinema : £5.80)
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