James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie star in the action-packed thriller, Wanted. Based loosely on a comic book miniseries Wanted by Mark Millar, the film also stars Morgan Freeman, Thomas Kretschmann and Konstantin Khabensky.
SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.
James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie in the movie "Wanted"
Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is an account manager and a total loser who leads a dull and pathetic life. His girlfriend even sleeps with his colleague, Barry (Chris Pratt). His boss, Janice (Lorna Scott) has never stopped annoying him by her persistent nagging and making stapling noise. Most of the times, Gibson needs some sort of medication to calm himself down.
While shopping for groceries in a convenient store, Gibson finds himself face-to-face with Fox (Angelina Jolie) who claims that Gibson’s father is dead and was killed by a stranger named Cross (Thomas Kretschmann). Gibson, facing great dangers, has no choice but to trust Fox after his bid to escape fails. Action-packed car chase pursues after that with both parties, Fox and Gibson and the enemy, Cross manage to escape from the cops.
Angelina Jolie in the movie "Wanted"
Fox introduces Gibson to meet Sloan and the rest of the Fraternity Assassins and invites him to join them in order to seek revenge for the murder of his father. Fox mentors Gibson and trains him to become a ruthless assassin by killing targets following death orders issued by The Fates.
In the end, when Gibson sees Cross in the street, he gives him a chase only to end up killing one of the members of the fraternity. The rare bullet shell left by Cross (Cross rarely leaves any evidence) gives Gibson enough clues to pursue him. As a result, the chase continues in Europe which ends up having Cross revealing himself as Mr. X, Gibson’s dad, after he was shot by his own son. While in disbelieve, he verifies the truth by asking Fox, who gives him a strong yes.
In the end, Gibson knows about the truth when Pekwarsky (Terence Stamp), his father’s close friend reveals the truth to him that Sloan tries to save himself from The Fates by creating his own death orders.
Remembering what The Repairman (Marc Warren) has told him, Gibson drives a truck loaded with thousands of rats, all strapped to time bombs and intrudes Sloan’s textile mills. His plan works perfectly as the explosions caused by the exploding rats has messed up the entire mills, making it easy for Gibson to kill everyone in the mills.
Eventually, Gibson finds himself surrounded by the members of the Fraternity, including Fox and Sloan. Gibson tries to convince the members of the Fraternity that Sloan has broken the code by hiding his own death order and that his father has found out, instead, Sloan attempts to finish off Gibson’s father. When The Gunsmith (Common) says he will ignore the rule and tries to fire a shot at Gibson, Fox makes a 360 degrees shot which kill all the members of the Fraternity standing in the circle (except Sloan) ending up killing herself as well.
Gibson gives Sloan a chase but Sloan has managed to escape. In the end, Gibson manages to trick Sloan with the same technique his father once used and killed Sloan.
The movie is quite entertaining with action-packed moments that never fail to impress despite the fact that bullets bending, jumping across buildings and healing oneself with candle wax seem to fake to believe. Angelina Jolie showed she still has the curves while James McAvoy gave an emphatic performance despite his first full-feature film.
The film ends up with Gibson reminding you (yes, you loser) to take control of your own life as he has already done so.
My ratings: 8 out of 10.
Popularity: 4%
