Sunday, June 29, 2008

Wanted - R

Those of you who are fans of the movie Office Space will really appreciate the first part of "Wanted". In establishing how bad Wesley Gibson's life is, his workplace is parodied much like Office Space. His boss is a despicable, mean character... who also carries and uses a red stapler. :) His co-worker and friend is sleeping with his girlfriend. Basically, he feels his life is meaningless and without purpose.

One night, he meets Fox (Angelina Jolie....who. BTW, has waaaay too many tattoos :). She first saves, and then recruits Wesley into a Fraternity of Assassins. It is revealed that he has gifts and abilities he was unaware of; he is then trained as an assassin so that he can avenge the murder of his father, who he had never met (his father left when he was 7 days old). His father, a member of the Fraternity, was murdered by a guy named Cross. The plan is for Wesley to kill Cross.

I found the Fraternity to pretty arrogant and self-righteous. They act like they are doing something noble by deciding who to kill. To me, it was demonstrative of the moral relativism that pervades our society...."it's right if I feel it's right...there is no right and wrong.." They also have this healing bath that stimulates white blood cells and enhances healing. As an aside, one of the members of the Fraternity wore a shirt with a large image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.


There are a couple of surprises, such as the truth of his father's fate, and why Wesley was recruited.

There is also plenty of action and some really cool stunts.


Content Warnings: There are a couple of brief, but graphic sex scenes with his friend and girlfriend.
The "F-Bomb" is dropped quite often.
There are pretty graphic scenes where people are killed...and you see a close-up of the bullet entering/exiting the victim.

cross-posted on A Catholic View


1 comment:

Julie D. said...

Interesting note: this is the first Hollywood movie for this Russian director who took Russia by storm with his movies Nightwatch and Daywatch, which blended Russian mythology with Western vampires and apocalyptic lore.

Those movies had some very graphic violence (watch out for the bathroom fight scene in Nightwatch for example ... or rather don't watch it) but also a distinctive visual style which is wowing movie critics in this film.