Went to see Wanted with some friends. Not really my type of movie. Which probably explains why I really didn't like it. Full 3 page rant below. Spoilers included. You have been warned. I'm guessing I'm viewing this movie in the wrong light, but yeah. Posting due to demand:
Wanted: A bad movie
Those of you that know me pretty much know that I bitch a lot. I have my reasons for doing so. Depressed, annoyed, just needing to vent to name a few. And after watching “Wanted” I’ve got another great reason to bitch. I can basically describe my feelings over this in one word: Ass. The movie was ass, the story was ass, the characters were ass, almost every thing sucked utter ass. Now, I’m probably one of the few standing alone on this point of view, but alas, I have frustrations that need to be said so I know that next movie about a league of mystical shitty assassins I will not watch.
How bad is this movie? Well, to give you a relative idea, I rate AvP:R pretty much BELOW the bottom of the barrel (that movie was also shit, please don’t see it). Now, after AvP:R came War. Wanted is right above those two. So it’s probably scrapping the bottom of the barrel or so. And no, that’s not a compliment. Everything about this movie from start to finish was just a giant mess. They head in one direction, which is completely opposite from what the movie was supposed to be. I don’t admit to have great taste in movies, but this was just so unbelievably stupid that it’s incredible.
So let’s start. Premise of the movie (spoilers ahead!) if you don’t know, the main character, Wesley is a regular ordinary person with problems that causes him to shake violent and that ‘he can’t seem to care about anything’. One day his father is assassinated and he is recruited into a league of assassins to avenge said father. Oh of course, he gets trained and is assigned to differing missions supposedly chosen by the “threads of fate”. Now here’s the BIG plot twist of the movie. Are you ready for it? Are you? Because it will totally BLOW your mind. Spoilers of course if you couldn’t tell.
Are you really ready? Well, here it is.
It turns out that the man who Wesley thought initially killed his father is ACTUALLY his father. Not ONLY that! But the machine that is supposed to produce the targets deemed to be too chaotic to live in the world actually is controlled by Sloan, the headmaster (I guess you can call him that) of the fraternity. So in other words, he gets to decide who to kill and makes a profit off of it. Wesley’s dad learnt about this and was subsequently hunted by Sloan.
Now! Where have I heard something similar to that before? Oh right! Star Wars. I’m pretty sure he even says “I am your father” at some point in the movie too. What a twist~ Aside from that, it also looks way too similar and is giving me bad vibes like War. SURPRISE SECRET IDENTITY. THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE DEEP CAUSE WESLEY JUST COMMITED PATRICIDE.
There are a lot of things wrong with this. To begin, Wesley’s father made plans to destroy the fraternity. But I’m guessing that he didn’t because the fraternity reached Wesley before him. Well, why didn’t he destroy the fraternity sometime when Wesley was away on a mission? Furthermore, if he was supposed to be protecting Wesley, why is he randomly shooting bullets at Fox, knowing that Wesley could be caught by a stray bullet? Oh right, I suppose curving bullets will save Wesley. Except, you know, he can still walk into the said path of the curving bullet. Try walking into a path of a thrown curve ball. I am fairly certain it can still hit you. So this tactic never made any sense at all. Next, he never ever tries to contact Wesley. He never even quickly says to Wesley anytime before his death that there are problems and troubles afoot. Sure, he might be constantly hunted and Fox was always around him. But what about that guy who saves Wesley after he falls off from the suspended train? That guy’s not even hunted like Wesley’s dad. So what’s the excuse here? Couldn’t he write him a message? MSN him? Nope, had to keep his mouth shut because this is supposed to be a BIG DRAMATIC TWIST (that makes no sense). Then he even has the FUCKING nerve to shoot that traceable to his son. WHY DIDN’T HE LEAVE A MESSAGE INSIDE THE FUCKING BULLET? ARGHELKLASAFS
Okay, moving on. Many things in the story continue to crash and burn. Like why is it that nobody except Wesley ever questions these “threads of fate”? Fox has her story sure. What about everyone else? I highly doubt something like that happened to every member of that fraternity. Not only that, but I also highly doubt Fox shared that memory with everyone around her. Next, why is it that the mice Wesley sends into compound not kill anyone? So the explosives are strong enough to destroy the complex made of concrete and steel but not strong enough to kill a human? Um…what? Next, why did Fox even bother telling him that he did kill his own father, when it would have been much easier to lie and then kill Wesley?
Then, there’s the entire showdown after the mice explode. Here’s this fraternity of assassins. And yet NO ONE can even hit him with a bullet. Or curving bullets of doom. Bullshit. Then in the grand final showdown where six people with guns (Gunsmith and Fox included) all point at Wesley and Wesley explains that Sloan was also selected by the threads before he started manufacturing his own for profit is the most retarded dialogue, followed by the most retarded action ever.
Sloan’s quote bottom line: “Believe in the code, then kill yourselves (but not me cause I’m the real pussy of this movie). Or follow me and we can build our own empire”. Yet no one questions Sloan. What, we can’t compromise? Considering the fact that you fucken dragged everyone here, I think you need to stand with Wesley dude. Then of course, Gunsmith says, “Fuck the code”. Which also leads me to say, “No Gunsmith, you are the demons”. So no one in this story outside of Wesley can think out of the box. Its either we all die together or kiss Sloan’s ass. Not let’s try to rebuild this fraternity for what it is or anything of that sort. The amount of sheer stupidity in that moment made me want to cut myself. The ONLY character whose action even makes any sense? Fox. Who proceeds to shoot everyone in the head including herself (minus Sloan). And yes, this makes sense because for her, she believes that maybe somewhere along the line, she could be a killer of somebody else’s parents (and probably already have done so). Of course, if NONE of them decided to kill each other, they could find other ways of atoning which I propose is the better action, but regardless, Fox’s action makes sense. Everyone else in that room needs to headdesk themselves since their brain is obviously not working.
FINALLY! In the final portion of the movie, Sloan ends up falling the same trap as one of his previous agents and is killed by Wesley. This scene is also retarded because you know, for all that Sloan was a genius at manipulating everyone and even had a backup plan against Wesley during the previous showdown, I am supposed to believe he falls for the same trick that one of his other agents died to.
…give me a FUCKING break. These characters are all retarded. I haven’t even gone to the biggest asshole of the movie because there are so many holes in the plot to rip. In terms of asshole, Sloan was one but he was supposed to be. Who else was retarded AND an asshole? Wesley.
Wesley in general is not likable. In the beginning, he was a wuss. Plain and simple. Then he was over eager and needed to get some sense knocked into him. Finally, he’s reckless beyond all hell. Then in the end, he is vengeful and nothing comes out of that vengeance. He seeks revenge, but there is not a tale afterwards, which leads to another complaint. Some of Wesley’s not-so-smart moments include after watching one of his friends in the fraternity die to his recklessness, he immediately sets off to the same reckless action right afterwards. Around halfway through the movie I wanted to throttle Wesley because he was basically unlikable to a very large degree. I cannot familiarize myself with an wussspazreckless dick. And so when he does kill his father and tragedy happens, I cannot give half a rat’s ass about what happens afterwards.
Finally, the action scenes. Some of them are way too over the top. Most notably is the one in the showdown where he is literally jumping and grabbing dropped guns in midair along with the slow down effects playing repeatedly. MATRIX BIG BRAWL VIBES. This film is certainly winning in originality at this point
A couple of other ones (although I guess not really action scenes) is where he smacks his best friend with the keyboard and leaves the message FUCK YOU in slow motion. Yeah Fuck you too Wanted. I understand this was supposed to be a funny moment, but it made me roll my eyes since if this was the best they could come up with humour, we have problems.
The problem with this movie is that it tries to take itself way too seriously. It presents all this philosophical stuff such as “Is life really set in fate?” and “Who are each of us to decide, how we live?” But then admist all this, we get loads of plotholes, asshole characters and too many things that doesn’t fly together. If you’re aiming for a serious plot, do that. Make things more coherent with better transitions. If you’re aiming for a comic style humor admist the action, please do not fill your explosions with philosophical questions. And if you’re aiming for a serious plot, make your characters more believable and less of an asshole so people can care about them. This movie was a spiraling trainwreck that basically got worse and worse as it kept moving.
