Movie Review: Wanted (2008)

Wanted is a very stylized action thriller, but unfortunately the style might best be described as “very 2000s.” For most of the movie’s runtime, I found it quite irritating. It has shades of Fight Club, of course, with the protagonist (James McAvoy) leading a dead end life until he meets this edgy cool character (Angelina Jolie) who shows him a world of so much more.

I’ve always really enjoyed McAvoy as an actor, but here, he just didn’t do it for me. I think it’s so weird hearing him do an American accent (this might be the only time I’ve seen him do it), and he just doesn’t do a great job as the pathetic anxiety-filled loser we see in the first act, or as the cool badass dude we see in the second half of the movie.

Jolie’s much more natural, because she’s just always been cool.

All the action is gleefully over the top, and this does make for a couple very fun sequences. There’s a car chase early on, and then the climactic sequence is so ridiculous that it’s great. It becomes a real splatter film when McAvoy shoots through a guy’s head and uses his body as a shield.

My biggest problem with the movie, though, is that most of it feels like a first act. McAvoy’s character does all this training, and obviously it pays off in the end, but he’s still training over halfway through the movie.

Rating: 5/10