Wanted: A Movie Review

By: birdjones Mood: confused Date: 07/08/2008 15:02:35 Music: None

I think Angelina Jolie’s career can be divided into two categories: “Chicks with guns”, and “Movies that no one saw”.
I hear that she turned down the starring role in “Pretty Woman” because the hookers didn’t carry an Uzi.
Fortunately for us, she’s not only packing some serious heat in “Wanted”, she also has a lot of tattoos.

What a bad girl.
“Wanted” is based on a comic book I hear.  I hope the comic book was called “The Matrix” because as far as I can tell there’s a wee bit of homage going on here(that's the French word for “rip off”).
Wesley Gibson’s life is in a rut. His life has no meaning and he spends his days in a tiny cubicle taking abuse from his boss while his girlfriend screws his co-worker.
Everything changes one day when Wesley is saved from an assassin while filling out a prescription for anti-anxiety medicine (take the blue pill Neo!!!).
His life is never the same.
You see, Wesley never knew his dad, but on the day that his father is killed by a traitor, the secret organization to which he belonged shows up to inform him that he has “special powers.”
Ok, maybe the movie is more like “Harry Potter.”
Anyway, here’s where the movie becomes funnier than a naked Will Ferrel scene.
This secret group of Assassins is known as “The Fraternity” (I guess “McKillers” was a bit too obvious) and they live in an inconspicuous castle in the middle of Chicago.
You heard me... (sigh)
Wanting to offset their carbon footprint (gunfire gives off a lot of smoke) they ride around on the tops of trains a lot shooting people through windows.
Clearly the bad people aren’t profiting enough to get an office located above the third floor and away from the subway but that’s neither here nor there.
“The Fraternity” likes to shoot people with untraceable bullets, but I’m having a bit of a problem with that term.
To me untraceable means that the bullet explodes or melts. To the Fraternity, untraceable means a bullet with more gears than Big Ben and intricate carvings on the outside that would make a Bill Reid jewelry box look like a Pez dispenser.
Maybe if you smear it with some DNA you’ll overwhelm the FBI computers with data and they’ll just give up trying to find you.
Why stop there? You shoot fancy bullets while riding on top of a subway and you hide out in the only castle in Chicago. I say you should kill people without wearing any pants too. Maybe add a rainbow afro wig to the ensemble.
This must be like reverse psychology.
The more obvious is it that you’re a trained assassin, the easier it is to hide in plain view.
I say that they should have called themselves the “Robert Blakes” (I’m giving OJ the week off. I’ll start slandering him again on Monday).
Hang on, I’m only getting started.
Do you want to know where they get their orders from?
It seems that “The Fraternity” are an ancient order of “weavers” and they’ve built a magic loom that spits out a secret code embedded in cloth.
Want to know who to kill? Grab a magnifying glass and look at a facecloth!!
I used that excuse when my wife caught me wearing her underwear on my head.
“I was... er… just catching up on some reading dear!!
As Wesley begins his training, he gets the crap beaten out of him by guys with names like “The Fixer” or “The Butcher.”
Never call an assassin “Carl”… they hate that.
In between stabbings and beatings, Wesley (who I guess will get a name like “The Telemarketer” when he graduates) heals his wounds in bath of molten wax.
They never mention it, but I’m pretty sure that all of these killers have genitals like a porn star.
I’m thinking that body hair has a shelf life of ten milliseconds after they chisel your naked ass out of a giant candle.
Ouch!!
But listen, this is a movie in which a Dodge Viper is outrun by a delivery van filled with cat foot (and the American auto industry wonders why it’s in trouble).
The only thing this movie ever had going for it was Angelina, and she’s looking a bit haggard in this film.
Angie, baby… you need to gain some weight. Trained assassins need to look more like “Sarah Conner” from T2, and a lot less like Lindsey Lohan drinking Jaggermeister shooters in the SlimFast aisle.
Two stars out of five.