Constant Viewer: Wanted
D.A. Ridgely on Jun 28th 2008
Wanted relies on so many dubious premises to advance its plot that it’s a good think it moves so quickly you never have time to think about it. Between Angelina Jolie showcasing her ink covered flesh in various stages of dishabille and bullets whizzing in various stages of stop action camera work through human skulls, it’s possible, if unlikely, that the average viewer might not think to himself “Hey, this is pretty damned preposterous!”
But it is. Never mind all the “who’s killing who right now and how and why” business that makes up the slender thread of a story that weaves its way back and forth from homicides to hot tubs, complete with plenty of blood for the former and tomb-like wax coatings for the latter. These tubs, we are told, speed the healing process our poor hero seems to need just about every five minutes, never mind they also give us an opportunity to see a buck naked Jolie! (Albeit from a distance and it’s probably a “stunt rear” anyway.).
No, far more preposterous is the underlying premise of a thousand year old guild of weavers – that’s right, weavers! – whose, yeah sure, discovery of a secret code in their cloth led them to convert the guild into a fraternity of assassins. (“Uthor, look at this!” “What do you mean? Those are just mistakes in the weaving, you dolt!” “No, look! In binary code it spells out “Kill Sir Aldo!” “Ohmygawd! That’s amazing! There’s just one thing, though.” “What’s that?” “What the hell is binary code?”)
Now, in the hands of, say, Umberto Eco this is the sort of idea that could lead to a soporific 1,500 page doorstop littered with twenty or thirty obscure quotes per page in equally obscure, dead or dying languages. In the hands of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, however, it’s as good an excuse as any for a popcorn flick that after the first reel almost literally grabs the viewer by the throat and never lets go. Okay, so your popcorn might get a little blood on it along the way. It’s a small price to pay for the ride, don’t you think?
Bekmambetov, by the way, also directed the sadly under-viewed but beautiful 2004 Night Watch, a gothic action film well worthy of a rental even if you’re not all that into vampires. Back to Wanted, however, Jolie puts in a satisfyingly sex-drenched performance here and the rest of the casting is very strong and, at least to Constant Viewer, a bit of a surprise. CV’s appreciation of James McAvoy rose appreciably after his work in what was really the best picture of 2007 (the Golden Globe folks were right, the Academy was wrong), Atonement.
But CV wouldn’t have thought of McAvoy as an action flick protagonist notwithstanding his perfect casting as the uber-nebbish cubicle slave we find at the beginning of the movie. Well, CV was wrong and unlike those wimpy film reviewers you’ll find elsewhere he is man enough to admit it. Rounding out the cast we find Morgan Freeman as the head of the assassin’s guild, Thomas Kretschmann as the rogue assassin, Cross, and the recently omnipresent Terence Stamp in a small but important role towards the end of the film. Not a ringer in the lot of them.
If CV were in the star awarding business, Wanted would come in at somewhere around 7 out of 10 stars. (Speaking of which, did you ever wonder why those previously mentioned wimpy film reviewers set up a 4 or 5 star scale and then go and award half-stars? What the hell is a half-star and why don’t they just double their unit of measurement in the first place?) And, of course, those are summer movie stars, not autumn Oscar contender stars, too. Okay, so there are better movies playing right now. But the audience actually applauded several times at the showing CV attended and, let’s face it, there are far, far worse movies out there, too. Hey, by all accounts the worst one out there at the moment isn’t even directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Filed in The Bijou
Atonement? Really? I enjoyed that one, but I’m not sure I’d put it at #1… In my opinion that should’ve gone to “Eastern Promises,” though I wouldn’t argue with “Michael Clayton,” or “No Country…” Then again, “Atonement” does have Keira Knightley (though primarily in full habille if I remember correctly,) which is something none of these others can say.
So you were just as hard-up for a good movie this weekend as I am… Sort of a lull until Hancock, Hellboy, and The X-Files movie hit the screen in the next few weeks.
Oh, I thought both WALL-E and Wanted were good movies and I’m not at all sorry I went to see either. I do look forward to Hancock and increasingly to seeing Heath Ledger’s already Oscar rumored performance in The Dark Knight. I seriously doubt I’ll be watching X-Files: I Want To Be Ripped Off Again, though. (Hey kids, remember when everyone thought David Duchovny was going to be a big film star?) If I want to be befuddled, I’d rather watch something by David Lynch or, in a pinch, “Lost” re-runs.
I am a huge fan of Atonement and think it’s one of the best films of the last ten years. One of these days I’m going to sit down and write a piece of film criticism (as opposed to these off-the-cuff reviews) defending that position. Still, remember that it’s one thing to say a movie is great, another to say that everyone should be doing back flips over it.
Haha, yeah I guess I was referring to not really looking forward to any of the current choices available. Both WALL-E and Wanted look like good visual pictures with little real depth (like most summer flicks,) and no real personal connection. Which brings me to The X-Files movie… Now at best I expect it to be a middle-of-the-road old episode with a huge budget and pretty decent effects, BUT Fox Mulder will always hold a special platonic place in my heart, so I can’t miss it… I guess you could say that’s the same reason I went to Indiana Jones, but I expect much more from Chris Carter’s last chance at a return to relevance than I do from George Lucas’ latest attempt to capitalize on a timeless franchise in order to line the pockets of his great-grandchildren. That being said, by all measures David Lynch or Lost would be a better use of your time, but I’m looking for something I haven’t seen before, so I will “Be Ripped Off Again.”
Well I’ll look forward to your Atonement critique. I only saw it once, so maybe I missed something, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as Eastern Promises, and didn’t find it to be as novel of an approach as Juno. And I knew I was forgetting something. I still need to see the last Batman offering, but I am looking forward to Ledger’s interpretation of The Joker (needless to say he has a pretty high bar to live up to, and I’m not talking about Cesar Romero.)
I actually think WALLE-E had a lot of depth, given that it’s premise is about ecological recall and the state of humanity’s poor handling of the environment. Or did the opening sequence not give this impression at all? The concept of simply abandoning the particular parcel for the sake of not thinking you can recover it sufficiently, instead of tending it in the here and now, is in fact VERY poignant and a direct parallel and caution to what is going on right now, and the current free market desire to rape the world for instant resource gratification. I think there was a great deal of depth to that film, and certainly much more than in batman Begins, though both films are incredibly good simply because the quality to which they delve is personal to most of us. Confronting fear and ecological conservativism is in fact more realistic and personal than, say, a rat controlling a human’s neurological command by pulling on particular hairs on the head, or talking toys that simply choose NOT to show themselves to humans.
If by “free market desire to rape the world for instant resource gratification” you mean something along the lines that people want to enjoy their lives with more material comfort than nature affords and so, left to their own devices, they freely produce and trade with each other so that they can consume, using natural resources to that end” then, yes, I’d say there is much to that perspective.
It is a fairly boring trope of science fiction that humanity destroys the Earth, either through violence or, more recently, pollution and sets off out into space for new worlds to plunder, etc., etc. Frankly, I think this is a wonderful idea and I would gladly sacrifice the planet if that were the bargain required to get human beings to successfully colonize space.
But along with all the other preposterous story points in WALL-E was the notion that [WARNING: Spoiler Alert!] the planet would remain a barren, lifeless junkyard for 700 years. Oh, sure, there are scenarios in which Earth could remain uninhabitable even by plant life for that long, but with the possible exception of the worst possible nuclear conflagration within our technological capabilities, nothing humanity has done or is capable of doing would lead to WALL-E’s world some seven centuries after we left and it sure as hell couldn’t be caused merely by what you call “free market desire to rape the world for instant resource gratification.”
So if that’s the sort of hysterical environmentalism the movie teaches, that’s an even better reason not to take the kids.
I haven’t seen WALL-E yet, so I can’t say much more beyond what I have, but your comments made me think of one of my favorite routines from the late great George Carlin.
I would gladly sacrifice the planet if that were the bargain required to get human beings to successfully colonize space.
I get the impression you would throw away the past for some impression of the future, and this seems telling if it would be okay to destroy Earth just to go to Mars. Then take this logically in progression: Destroy Mars to go to Jupiter, and so forth. Eventually there will be nothing but an endlessly marching rape machine with people incapable of understanding ecology and history.
So if that’s the sort of hysterical environmentalism the movie teaches, that’s an even better reason not to take the kids.
I find that comment amazing. Taking the kids to see the movie, they see what happens when you destroy things and prevent good things from happening. I took my autistic brother to see the movie and he understood EXACTLY what was going on in the film. That an educated person can go see the film with all the intricasies of Dostayevsky and still come away enjoying it is an honor unto PIXAR, which they seem to have been acknoweledged for since Toy Story (which is, frankly, about the love a boy has for his toys; if you were to transpose that story to humans alone, it would be pretty sick and probably not as low-rated as pg-13, either).
Well, just going to Mars isn’t my idea of successfully colonizing space, but I’m happy to amaze. Usually, I have to settle for merely dazzling.
As for your apparent obsession with rape as a metaphor (”…an endlessly marching rape machine with people incapable of understanding ecology and history”) for progress, I get the growing impression that your own understanding of ecology and history, never mind of ethics or economics, might be somewhat less than rigorous or dispassionate. But to each his own.
As for your apparent obsession with rape as a metaphor (”…an endlessly marching rape machine with people incapable of understanding ecology and history”) for progress, I get the growing impression that your own understanding of ecology and history, never mind of ethics or economics, might be somewhat less than rigorous or dispassionate. But to each his own.
And I tend to feel that comments like this climb down the slippery slope of ad hominem argumentation. It also makes me suspect that 1) I have not made myself clear, or 2) you have not understood what i said. Possibly the former, but I would not discount the latter. I have not attacked you.
However, in the comment about my use of the term “rape”, it is an allusion to another phrase I made, “rape of the natural world” which is a common enough understanding of resource destruction without reenrichment that has led to interference with governmental access to places such as the western Oregonian temperate rainforest, the Alaskan wilderness, and so forth. This is in fact one of the reason national parks were established. To argue that these should be thrown to the side for the sake of personal progress is, as I argued, to ignore the past.
One tends to live in the moment and praise only one’s own impulses, since to go where one wants now and in the process eradicate the natural ecology of the place you are now, just to be somewhere new, is hardly intelligent.
I will also not discuss my comprehension of ecology without being told whom my opponent will be, or his own comprehension of ecology.
But CV wouldn’t have thought of McAvoy as an action flick protagonist notwithstanding his perfect casting as the uber-nebbish cubicle slave we find at the beginning of the movie.
If CV had seen McAvoy as Leto Atreides II in the SciFi channel’s Children of Dun, he might have thought differently. Not the best movie, but quite a good performance from McAvoy…