Wanted: A Movie That Does Not Suck

My wife’s an Angelina Jolie fan, so we rented Wanted — and, oy, big mistake. We watched maybe 30 minutes and that was all we could stand. You can really tell it’s from a comic-book — it has the white, male, nerdy angst thing down cold. Except, where the point with Spider-Man was always that Peter was at least somewhat likeable, the hero here is just whiny and despicable and boring. The by-the-numbers transformation into incredible assassin who bends bullets is thunderingly dumb, and the whole super-hip visuals and urban coolness thing is more or less utterly undermined by the fact that the whole schtick has been stolen wholesale from the Matrix.

This is definitely one of those movies, too, where the wish-fulfillment is all about some nerdy schmo getting with (or in this case, just being somewhat near) incredibly hot babe. They can’t even seem to get that right, though; at least in the first quarter, Jolie’s hardly on screen, and by the time you’ve watched that, you don’t want to watch anymore. I guess I just don’t quite understand why you’d have Angelina Jolie in the movie, and then spend most of your time following this relentlessly boring, whiny guy. You’ve got someone on screen with actual charisma, for god’s sake. Couldn’t we just watch her? Why not have her be the depressed nobody who turns into the amazing assassin? Surely that (or anything really) would have been better than this.

0 thoughts on “Wanted: A Movie That Does Not Suck

  1. The movie is actually pretty tame compared to the comic. In the book, the main character is a racist, raping sociopath whose only virtue is that he’s slightly less evil than his enemies. It’s an empowerment fantasy for assholes, or in other words, a typical Mark Millar book.

  2. Tom, you’d have to ask her.

    Richard, the comic actually maybe sounds more appealing than the film. I mean, I’m not going to read it or anything, but it at least doesn’t sound quite as thoroughly cliched as the movie.

  3. Alas, if only my wife read the blog, she could comment herself — but, of course, she doesn’t. I’ll email you, though.