Hero Realm!

Wanted - Blu-Ray

By Ed Worrell

Wanted is without a doubt what summer movies are all about. Tons of action, guns, hot chicks, special effects, and violence. There's a couple of things you may want to have handy before you sit down to watch it though. Suspension of disbelief? Check. Remote control to rewind because you want to make sure you saw what you think you just saw? Check. Something to hide that tent pole you'll be pitching after Angelina Jolie gets out of the tub? Check.

Now that you're ready, here's what it's all about.
Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) leads the most mundane, pathetic existence you can imagine. His boss takes out her frustrations on him daily, his best friend is banging his nagging, whiny girlfriend, and he's flat broke. Enter Fox (Angelina Jolie) who brings him to The Fraternity, a secret society of assassins whose hideout is disguised as a textile factory. Here he learns that his father, who he has never met, was killed by a rogue assassin. His father was considered to be the best assassin in the Fraternity, and they believe that Wesley may be the only one with the inbred skill to be able to take out this rogue assassin.

That's the plot, in a nutshell. However, there's definitely more to this than meets the eye. Really, though, let's be honest. This was a movie made for its eye candy more than the plot, and in that department, it doesn't disappoint at all. This movie looks and sounds incredible on Blu-Ray. The special effects are amazing, on par with some of the effects that we saw in The Matrix, some even surpassing them. There are quite a few parallels between this movie and The Matrix. You may see when you watch.

As I said before, leave logic at the door with this one, because there are definitely some "Yeah whatever" moments here, but it's still a lot of fun. That's the judge of a good movie, in my opinion. Did I have fun watching this? Did I just waste an hour and 50 minutes of my life? The answer here is a resounding no.

That's not to say I didn't have any problems with the movie at all. I don't want to spoil too much, but there are some minor spoilers ahead. Not having read the comic that the movie is based on, I had a few burning questions.

Who or what exactly is running the loom that produces the hit list? This is a point that's never explained, and it kind of stuck in my craw a bit that they never went to any effort to do so.
Why did Wesley assume that all of the Fraternity members were out to kill him? Sloan (Morgan Freeman) was the only one that supposedly knew about the conspiracy (which I'm not going to detail here), so why not go after just him?
Also, who exactly was the character played by Terrence Stamp? Little to no explanations given as to his purpose or role in the film, other than to fill Wesley in about his real father.
The train sequence....this was waaaay over the top.

What was great about the movie?
The opening sequence had so much kickassery (its a word, really) its not even funny. I knew I was in for a real visual treat after the first 5 minutes.
The car chases were incredible.
The 'curve the bullet' scenes were just amazing, especially when they're in a real fight and not just practicing.
Morgan Freeman was awesome, as usual, and did I mention Angelina Jolie getting out of a bathtub? <<shiver>> Need a cold shower....
I totally bought into Wesley as a pathetic loser who gets trained to do some amazing things. They really did a great job with that transition.

Now, a bit about the Blu-Ray and what kinds of goodies are included here.
First, an alternate opening that gives us a little more insight into the beginnings of The Fraternity. Honestly, I'm glad this was left out. Then you get your standard making-of featurettes, cast and characters, how they brought Mark Millar's graphic novel to the big screen, and so on.
The coolest thing on the disc is something that quite a few movies that have come out on blu-ray have done recently, and that is a picture-in-picture u-control feature that you allows you to access all of the special features while you're watching the movie. You can see how they did the special effects for a particular scene, see what it looked like before and after all the computer enhancements, or just look at all of the regular features about the cast and direction team.
This is really a cool feature that standard dvd's won't have, and another reason to buy this on blu-ray.

My rating for Wanted:

4 tramp stamps out of 5

Buy or not to buy? I bought it and I'm happy I did. Are there issues? Yeah, a few. I take this movie for what it is though, and it's mindless, violent, bloody, and a lot of fun.