We just got back from seeing Wanted - the newest summer blockbuster popcorn film and it truly was excellent - I would say the best of that genre in a very long time!
Great story, fantastic action scenes, some funny lines and scenes, and of course - a cast that includes Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie can’t be all bad to begin with!
Oh yes, there will be some nitpicking going on with a few things in the movie, but all in all - considering this is the summer of Ironman, Indiana Jones and Hulk, WANTED is easily the best action popcorn film to come along this year!
So, is it that kind of slick, soulless, meaningless cool, or is there some actual emotion and thought involved? (Either way can be enjoyable, but the second kind stays with you.)
I’m still kind of disappointed they didn’t actually MAKE Wanted, but what they did with it looked interesting, on its own, so I’m glad to hear it came out well.
The former. It’s cool, but oh boy, is it dumber than a box of rocks. It’s enjoyable if you take your brain out, put it in a bag, lock it in a box, and put it under your bed before you leave for the theater. It’s not anywhere NEAR as cool as Night Watch, which disappointed me. I enjoyed it mainly for the Chicago locations and staring at James MacAvoy. Angelina Jolie is very cool (and way beautiful) in it. I hope it does well because I’d like to see the director do more English-language films.
It’s a big summer blockbuster, the type that doesn’t bear close examination. I enjoyed it, but I’m not especially proud that I enjoyed it. I didn’t like it as much as the director’s “Daywatch”.
I thought it was fun in a video game kind of way. It works pretty well on a viceral, adrenaline level. The story and the action is ludicrous at every level but the movie knows that and has fun with it. I would call it more surrealistic than stupidly unrealistic. The whole thing is like a cubical drone’s wildest daydreams brought to life.
Angelina Jolie is really cool in this, by the way. And she looks really hot in a red Dodge Viper.
I have to say that I’m really excited to hear about all the accidental deaths resulting from drugged up teens trying to curve bullets around their friends.
From the Hollywood Reporter review:
“Set in Chicago but shot in a cleverly disguised Prague (save for a noticeably Eastern European-accented rendition of “Happy Birthday” by Gibson’s fellow office workers)…”
At least some of it was actually filmed in Chicago as it was a major annoyance of my old roommate when she and her coworkers were not allowed to leave a hotel as they were filming a scene right outside the door and had the entire street shut down.
I think McAvoy is one of the reasons it works. As preposterous as a lot of the movie is in many regards, McAvoy plays his character like a real guy teleported into a crazy world of Xbox physics and abilities. He provides a vicarious ingress for the viewer. I think his best scenes might be in the excitement and exuberance he starts to show that first day after he gets picked up by Jolie and taken to the Fraternity. He goes from being weary and depressed and bullied to not being able to keep the grin off his face. I think it’s a little different from the usual action movie convention of a serious, virtue-motivated protagonist. It’s a guy who just can’t get over how cool this shit is. A more realistic response, I think.
As has been pointed out, parts of Wanted were filmed in Chicago for a couple of weeks last August. Even without trying we could hardly help but hear some of what the Jolie-Pitt clan were up to while they stayed in Chicago, such as getting a private after-hours tour of the Field Museum and shopping. I’m a fan of the duo but I was never tempted to seek out filming locations. I would like to have met James McAvoy though. I regret now not trying while he was in town. I’d love to ask him how much research he put into being a Kate Bush fan for the movie Starter For Ten (the character was a huge fan).
The Death Race trailer actually bugged me tremendously. It appears as if they completely dumped the original premise of having the drivers get awarded points for killing civilians and substituted a trite device where the drivers are just convicts trying to kill each other. The satire and the transgressive black humor are completely gone. It looks like just another action movie now. It’s The Condemned with cars.
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