2008 Blockbuster 7 "Wanted"

When I saw the trailer for this one, I wasn't really too excited. Angelina Jolie already did the assassin thing in "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", and it was good enough that I didn't need a retread. James McAvoy is a fine actor and all, but he seems kind of scrawny to be a super-collosal killing machine. And as for Morgan Freeman... Okay, there's just nothing bad to say about Morgan Freeman.

Remember that Alec Baldwin movie "The Shadow"? (I'll forgive you if you don't. No one saw it and it's not even available on DVD in widescreen, let alone Blu-Ray. But it rocks.) There's a scene in that movie where The Shadow and the bad guy shoot at each other and their bullets collide in mid-air. Both of them seem kind of shocked by the coincidence.

Imagine if characters could do stuff like that at whim. That's what "Wanted" is all about.

The basic idea--that McAvoy's Wesley is the son of the best assassin in the world and probably has those amazing genes--is okay, I guess. It's not like we haven't seen this story before. ("Star Wars", anyone?) So what's the hook here? The hook is that this film takes the concept of what a physical human can do (at least, without magic or cybernetics) to an insane limit. Shooting the wings of off flies is just the first thing that Wesley does that seems ridiculous... but is still pretty cool.

All in all, the story (mostly Wesley trying to unravel the truth about his father's murder) is pretty good, and it hangs together fairly well. And the visuals are pretty sweet. The ending is pretty good, too. I liked it, but I didn't love it.

I imagine this will be one of those movies that simply doesn't age well. I don't know if, after five years, after special effects have taken the bar even higher, if this one will be quite as engaging. But I enjoyed it while I was watching it, anyway.