Murder, Incorporated

You’ve seen all the tricks in ‘Wanted’ before, but never so good

‘Wanted’
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Cast: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman
Rating: R
Grade: 4 Globes

There’s nothing in “Wanted” you haven’t seen before. In fact, pretty much everything in the movie has been done a gazillion times over — often badly. That’s why “Wanted” is so easy to love. This material is commonplace, but rarely is it so well executed.

Director Timur Bekmambetov and a team of screenwriters rarely misstep as they tell the story of Wesley (James McAvoy), a self-described sissy (he uses a better, less printable word) who finds himself suddenly recruited by the Fraternity of Assassins, plucked from the nerd table of his cubicle to sit with cool kids like Angelina Jolie, Common and, um, Morgan Freeman. From the start, we’re meant to identify with Wesley (“we” meaning loser-ish guys under 35) in the same way that we identify with Carrie Bradshaw (“we” meaning girls who won’t give such guys the time of day): as a proxy for ourselves. He hates his job, enjoys no social life and though he has a girlfriend, she’s so terrible (She cheats on him! She sounds stupid when she talks!) that you just know poor Wesley would be better off dating his hand and playing “World of Warcraft” like the rest of his ilk. What’s not to love?

Plenty, on the surface. There is little shame in the filmmakers’ attempts to connect Wesley to their target audience, and this Holden Caulfield-by-way-of-Peter Parker trick is hardly new. But it works in large part because of McAvoy, who plays Wesley with plenty of geeky comic bitterness in the cubicle, then turns on a dime to make a convincing post-training sequence badass. But credit also goes to Bekmambetov and the writers, who pile on the blood splatter and physics-bending effects, but never take it too seriously. The severity of a body count this high is undermined not by indifference, but by exploding rats, liberal F-word usage and an ATM that insults its user for being broke. The message: Killing can be fun — and it is.

The “Wanted” formula would seem a hard one to mess up in the geek-king era. After all, what pasty loser doesn’t want Angelina Jolie to tell him that his father was the world’s greatest assassin and he has a destiny to fulfill — a destiny that involves shooting bad guys. But a relatable character alone doesn’t sell a movie like this. It takes more skill than such a silly endeavor warrants. “Wanted” is the product of such skill.