Summer blockbusters are the quintessential grab-bag of movies. They’re usually more style than substance, but since the American public and its collective two-second attention span can’t seem to deal with deeper fare year-round it’s become somewhat of an expectation to have an entire season full of fun put-your-brain-on-cruise-control eye candy. So enter Wanted. Yet another comic book adaptation, about an apathetic guy struggling to discover who he is amidst “panic attack” episodes that keep him cowering from the world around him. When it’s revealed to him just what these episodes really are he suddenly realizes that the world is not the fear factory he once thought but rather a playground for him and others like him. I can usually smell a stupid juvenile shoot-‘em-up movie from a mile away but Wanted seemed to be getting enough good reviews to keep me interested. It took me forever to convince my wife to go see it (and she like Angelina Jolie) but I finally got her to go and figured that at least it would be summer popcorn fun. How wrong I was.
The movie started strong with a crazy opening scene and sharp humor, but everything started to run out of steam about 30 minutes in. And sure there’s the premise of curving, colliding bullets, which could have been really interesting if it weren’t used as a crutch for such a shitty script. I’m not going to get into the storyline but suffice to say that it dumbs down really fast. By the time the climax limps around I found myself watching a movie where the hero takes out the villain’s base with exploding rats – yeeaaah. Even the last line in the film, where the hero challenges the audience with, “What the fuck have you done lately?” got a theater-wide groan and roll of the eyes. Well, let’s see, I wasted the last two hours watching you stumble around like a retarded choirboy trying (hard) to look cool holding a gun. But hey, congrats on becoming the next cliché’ of American stupidity. Did I mention that Angelina Jolie stars in this movie? You get to watch her kick ass and see her bare ass – and I still want my money back. Enough said.
1 out of 5
Not worth renting
Not worth buying