Blue Ray Movies

Wanted (Limited Edition Collector’s Gift Set) [Blu-ray]

Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 12/02/2008 Run time: 110 minutes Rating: Pg13 As the impresario behind gravity-defying Russian blockbuster Night Watch, it’s inevitable that Hollywood would come calling for Timur Bekmambetov. With a studio budget and an international cast, including two Oscar winners, Timur cooks up a Hong Kong-styled actioner bursting with fast cars and big guns. Our unlikely hero is mild-mannered Chicago accountant Wesley Gibson (Atonement’s James McAvoy), whose father died when he was a tot. Wesley never learned to stand up for himself, and his girlfriend, boss, and best buddy all take advantage until the seductive Fox (Angelina Jolie) rescues him from a sharpshooter named Cross (The Pianist’s Thomas Kretschmann). After which, she whisks him away to a mansion on the edge of town to meet the other members of the Fraternity, where leader Sloan (Morgan Freeman) informs Wesley that Cross, a rogue agent, executed his father. Sloan believes Wesley has the goods to take him out, so he undergoes the Fraternity’s brutal training regimen (Marc Warren and Common dish up some of the abuse). When he’s ready, Sloan sends him out to fulfill his duty, but matters become complicated when Wesley finds out someone isn’t telling the truth, leading our former milquetoast to exact an elaborate revenge. For those who’ve been following McAvoy’s career to date, Wanted will surely come as a surprise. In adapting Mark Millar’s comic series, Timur offers buckets of blood and a smidgen of depth, but fans of The Matrix and Mr. and Mrs. Smith will want to give this one a look. –Kathleen C. Fennessy

Stills from Wanted (Click for larger image)

User Ratings and Reviews

2 Stars I Feel Slightly Dirty
Come on now really? Don’t get me wrong, this film was very good for what it was but a lot of it served absolutely no purpose than to give the action junkie in all of us a quick thrill. Given the cast at the helm, you would be forgiven for believing that this film could be a bit more than a shallow attempt at a dramatic but action packed film. Seriously, the fact that Morgan Freeman was involved should have given this film a 5 star rating from the get-go but even he couldn’t save this shallow travesty. I found myself being both annoyed and confused by this film and hopefully, I’ll be able to share in my annoyance and confusion towards this film with readers of my review.

Wanted is a story about the definitive nobody named Wesley Gibson (Macavoy). His life is repetitive, tedious, monotonous and every other word in the English dictionary that describes it as a bit dull and uneventful. He works in a job he hates for a boss who’s the most annoying person in the world, did I mention she’s fat? Well that’s apparently pretty important for this bitch of a boss stereotype. He has a girlfriend who’s cheating on him with his apparent best friend (brief sex scene with this, woo hoo) and his life just seems to be going nowhere. One day while picking up his prescription of anxiety pills, Gibson is confronted by a sexy vixen (a bit too tough for my liking but there you go) we come to know as Fox (Jolie). She tells him that he’s the son of one of the greatest assassins that ever lived and the man that killed him is now trying to kill Wesley. Wesley learns that his Father belonged to a fraternity of expert assassins lead by Sloan (Freeman, I know awesome right? Wrong) and it’s now Wesley’s fate to join and kill the man who killed his father. He is then trained by the fraternity to make him good enough to take the man down.

The whole plot in itself is generally that straight forward; it creates an excuse to have a whole lot of blood and bullets, while struggling to instil a sense of depth in our characters. It is straight forward but as is with most films these days, there has to be a “clever” twist at the end to make you think like enduring the whole painful movie was worth it. The big name actors were cool. Morgan Freeman presented his usual casual authoritative character who will take guff from nobody. Angelina Jolie, although I hate to say it as I do think she’s a really good actress. Her only obvious purpose in this movie was to look a bit pretty and arouse the horny teenagers watching this. James Macavoy annoyed the hell out of me, for the first part of the film as he just came across as depressing and his annoying screaming did nothing to quash my hatred.

The only genuinely redeeming part of this film tends to be the action and the special effects which are involved in such action sequences as are featured within the film. However, even the action gets to a point at times where I just find it a bit exhausting as a lot of it doesn’t make sense. A few examples of it not making sense are in the car chase scene in which a Dodge Viper is trying desperately to escape what I remember to be a Dog Food delivery truck. Now at this point Wesley has become pretty freaked out by all the shooting so makes a run for it. Fox, all angered and sexy jumps in her equally sexy and mechanical Dodge Viper and gets Wesley in the car without stopping and travelling over more than 60 MPH without breaking his legs or some part of his spine. The other part is simply how the Dodge struggles to get away from the truck. I guess this can be explained away by just saying it’s a movie, but surely the makers could have done a terminator type chase. They could have had the enemy in a big bad and destructive truck and the victims in a sexy, but not too powerful vehicle.

Personally, if you’re looking for a movie that isn’t a waste of real acting talent, then you should seriously look elsewhere. If you’re a pre-pubescent child who doesn’t like to think too much and likes to look at pretty women who don’t think whilst acting, then this is genuinely the movie for you. It’s violent, it’s a bit sexy and it’s slightly cool in some parts, but for the film fan that likes to think and enjoys a bit of depth to their movie, then this is sincerely something you should stay away from.

4 Stars 4/5
Great movie except the ending of the last action scene was a total let-down. The last action battle totally ramps you up to where you want to see how he does against multiple targets… and the screenwriter just robs you of the climax. You’re left with a total letdown feeling. Then the ending scene is fine but it just doesn’t make up for the “being robbed” portion. Overall, a great movie and still worth buying for the rest of it.

1 Stars Morgan and Angelina laugh all the way to the bank
‘Wanted’ begins with a shootout between two professional assassins in a high-rise office building. One off the assassins jumps to the rooftop of the other building where he murders all the people who are trying to kill him. However, when he jumps, he’s able to fly across horizontally without falling to the ground. He’s also able to control the bullets he fires from his gun making them bend around potential victims and then striking the targets he seeks. All this comic book nonsense wouldn’t be so offensive except for the fact that the director enjoys reveling in the violence throughout the film. Bullets fly in slow motion and always seems to strike their victims in the center of the head with gobs of blood oozing all over the place.

Brian McAvoy plays Wesley Gibson, an office worker hooked on anti-anxiety medication. He’s a wuss surrounded by his unlikeable boss, an obese woman who berates him all the time. His best friend humiliates him by having sex with his girlfriend in front of him on multiple occasions. Gibson is recruited by a 1000-year old secret society of assassins called “The Fraternity” led by Sloan (played by Morgan Freeman) who informs him that one of their renegade members, Cross, has murdered one of their best members, who just happens to be Gibson’s father who he never knew. Apparently The Fraternity wants to train the hopeless Gibson because they feel being an assassin is in his blood. He goes through a very long-winded training period where various members of the group (including “Fox” played by Angelina Jolie) toughen him up by punching, stabbing and shooting him all over his body. Gibson must be subjected to numerous rounds of torture until he becomes ‘egoless’ and finally adopts the steel-like mindset of the professional assassin.

The Fraternity is not without its new age pretensions for every time they beat Gibson to a pulp during their training session, they then put him in a bath, place some kind of clay all over his body (including his face) and fill him with vodka. Miraculously the bath and the vodka do the trick and he’s up and about to face another round of beatings until he’s ready to go forth and battle Cross. Meanwhile, Sloan reveals to Gibson how members are given their assignments. They work in some sort of textile factory where a loom weaves a tapestry which produces messages with some kind of secret code discernible within the fabric. Sloan seems to be the only one who knows how to decipher the messages and hence doles out the assignments. Gibson along with Fox end up shooting some guy in an office building while they’re running from one subway train to another on an elevated track.

Things get worse when Gibson finally is able to track down Cross and kills him but not before finding out that Cross was actually his Dad and the Fraternity had double-crossed him. In the laughable finale, Gibson drives a garbage truck full of rats armed with miniature time bombs and dumps them inside some European castle where the Fraternity are all ensconced. The rats explode and most of the assassins are killed. Sloan somehow escapes but Gibson dupes him (we never find out how) by planting a double in his old office cubicle.

Just about like every other death in this film, Sloan takes a bullet in the forehead. The last shot in the film is Gibson holding his machine gun, cursing all his opponents and basically bragging what a macho guy he is.

‘Wanted’ is basically trash for mindless 14-year-old’s. The director is from Russia and famous for Vampire films. This would have been a much better film if he threw a few vampires into the mix. Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie merely show up to cash their paychecks. Not only does ‘Wanted’ promote violence, it revels in it. In the perverted moral universe of ‘Wanted’, a winner is defined as the last thug left standing. Hopefully you won’t pay $12 to see this trash. When it comes to cable, just flick your remote to the next channel.

4 Stars Its Pretty Much What We Wanted
Wanted isn’t going to inspire you like Spider-man, or blow your mind like Watchmen or The Dark Knight, but its a whole lot of fun. James McAvoy is an amazing actor through his expressions. He makes a believable character for all of us and most of us in the theater really related to Wesley. With this great character, whom the audience connects with, and a new stylist action tone, you come together at a very entertaining film.

I reccomend at least seeing this, however owning it gave me great satisfaction. The special features were entertaining for the most part, and I’m enjoying watching the film on Blu-ray more than one time. The U-control feature that I utilized earlier on The Incredible Hulk disc, needs a little revising, In my opinion, because I don’t want to have to rewind and select another button to see my behind-the-scenes clips. Other than that the Blu-ray version seems to be very purchasable.

You’ll enjoy this movie for: Jolie, Freeman, McAvoy, the action, the less-CGI stunts, the bullet curving, and much more….

1 Stars piss poor
This movie was awful. The action sequences seem written by a fifth grader with the imagination which could only come from a boardroom struggling to find a new concept for an action movie. I really have to wonder how the hell this became a major motion picture, did someone owe someone a huge favor? Seriously this movie was obvioulsy written, then plugged with some over-the-top twists. If this movie held your interest then I hope you are under the age of 14, and consequently restricted from seeing anything but the previews. Also the direction and acting were both sub-par, it was a shame to see Morgan Freeman in this feature, he should fire his agent.

Buy/More Info

Filed under: Blue Ray Movie Reviews