Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted opens on a Chicago office worker who hates his life, and for a while the film hates it with him. James McAvoy plays Wesley Allan Gibson, a 24-year-old in a cubicle, medicated for panic attacks, living with a girlfriend who cheats on him with his best friend. Then Angelina Jolie arrives as Fox and tells him his murdered father was an assassin.
Trailer, via Shout! Studios.
The Fraternity’s Loom of Fate
The Fraternity is a secret society of killers headquartered in a repurposed textile mill. Sloan, played by Morgan Freeman, shows Wesley the Loom of Fate: for 1,000 years it has supplied coded names of targets through deliberate imperfections in the fabric.
Sloan interprets the code. The premise is absurd, and Wanted knows it, which is most of why the first hour works.
Curving Bullets and a Keyboard
The training is the film’s best stretch. The Repairman, played by Marc Warren, breaks bad habits by beating trainees. The Butcher teaches knife work. Sloan orders Wesley to shoot the wings off several flies, and he does.
Wesley’s panic attacks turn out to be a rare ability that floods him with adrenaline, giving him superhuman strength and speed. He learns to curve bullets. He hits Barry with a keyboard.
Who Trains Wesley
| Character | Actor | Job in the Fraternity |
|---|---|---|
| Fox | Angelina Jolie | Mentor to Wesley |
| Sloan | Morgan Freeman | Leader, reads the Loom |
| The Gunsmith | Common | Trains others in weapons |
| The Exterminator | Konstantin Khabensky | Bombs, attached to rats |
| Pekwarsky | Terence Stamp | Rogue bullet maker |
What the Cast Signed Up For
McAvoy was rejected early in 2006 because the studio wanted conventional leading-man looks, then recalled. He twisted an ankle and injured a knee during shooting.
Jolie asked for Fox to be killed, arguing that if Fox learned she had killed unjustly, she should take her own life. She kept Fox silent in many scenes to make her distant. She added temporary tattoos to the 13 she already had.
A Sequel That Never Arrived
Wanted opened June 27, 2008, grossed $342 million worldwide, and drew praise for its fast pace and stylized action. A sequel was announced shortly after release and stalled in development.
The film’s problem is that it never decides whether the Fraternity is a joke or a genuine order. Freeman plays Sloan straight, which is funny for a while and then just inert. The Loom is a great mechanic wasted on a third act that trades invention for gunfire.
Wanted is a 110-minute action thriller with a strong cast and one genuinely strange idea. It is worth watching for the training sequences and Jolie’s stillness. It is not worth defending as more than that.
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