Wanted

Though populated with top-tier actors like James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, and Terence Stamp, Wanted ultimately comes off as an entirely ineffectual actioner that suffers from many of the same problems that one now associates with the genre. The movie, which follows a meek office worker (McAvoy’s Wesley Gibson) as he slowly-but-surely becomes a ruthless killing machine after learning that his father was a superhuman assassin, admittedly does offer some promise in its early scenes, as Wesley’s transformation from put-upon schlub to ultra-confident alpha male proves an irresistible bit of wish-fulfillment fantasy (with the sequence in which he violently quits his job an obvious highlight). There’s little doubt, however, that the palpable lack of plot lends the proceedings a distinctly uneven vibe virtually from the get-go, with Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, and Chris Morgan’s screenplay suffering from an aimless quality that only grows more troublesome as the film progresses (ie the entire third act generally serves no purpose other than to pad out the already-overlong running time). Exacerbating the movie’s various deficiencies is Timur Bekmambetov’s relentlessly hyper-kinetic sense of style, which, though initially kind of intriguing, eventually cements Wanted‘s place as a violent yet thoroughly empty piece of work.

** out of ****