Wanted: Little More Story, Little Less Action

How many times have you gone into a movie theater with great expectations from a movie and come out thanking your stars that you at least had a good star cast to look at? It’s a certain bet you’ll feel the same way about Wanted, the new action thriller in town.

The story, which is an adaptation from a comic book series, is straight from deja vu street and borders on the silly. However, there is this gun-toting mama by name Angelina Jolie who made a believer out of you in the Tomb Raider series, and she weaves the same magic this time around and that is enough literally to see the movie through.

Add to the mix Morgan Freeman and also James McAvoy (seen earlier in movies like The Last King of Scotland and Atonement) and some very slick direction, and you will understand what I meant when I said earlier on that this is a movie that will find its way through based on sheer star power.

The story itself is nothing out of the ordinary – Wesley (McAvoy) is a low key person leading a low key life in Chicago. Enter Fox (Jolie), an assassin by trade, and Wesley embarks on a journey of a lifetime, learning the art of weaponry and killing along the way.

At the head of the band of assassins of which Fox is part is Morgan Freeman, who spouts lines like a whale spouts air and also wields weapons, and while anyone else in that role may have fallen flat on their faces, Freeman is convincing.

Also the fact that at the helm of affairs for Wanted is Timur Bekmambetov, the Kazakh director who has made his bones in the international circuit with films like Night Watch and Day Watch, is another big plus.

There are basic questions that arise, and the director has some equally strange answers to them. For one, why Wesley and not any of the countless other people that comprise Chicago’s population? Apparently, because Wesley’s father was part of this band led by Freeman.

What is the purpose behind transforming Wesley the Nobody to Wesley the Smarts? Revenge, to put it in one word – he is to gun down the man that killed his father. Hmmm…never mind…

However, if you can brush aside the weak storyline, the movie is a treat to watch from a technical standpoint. The action is violent and the car chases and gun battles are fit for a full-time action movie that Wanted wants to be labeled as.

Like I said earlier, Jolie has proved to us right from Lara Croft to Mr. and Mrs. Smith that there is no female actor that looks better with a couple of guns in hand than her, and the action sequences she does are convincing enough for you to want to see her in the next action flick.

About Bekmambetov, he has proved, with Wanted, he has what it takes to join the big boys of the action league. All he needs to add the next time around to make it all the more believable and saleable is a good story around which to weave his action and cast his stars.