Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov 2008)
Posted on March 07 at 19.50, 2009 by Eric Mahleb
A regular topic on this blog is that of bad versus good trash. What makes, for example, Eagle Eye (2008) and The Day the Earth Stool Still (2008) bad trash and what makes Wanted good trash? Why are the cliches acceptable in the later but not in the first two? Even though there are many reasons why a film can be bad, there is however usually one overarching common reason: bad trash films tend to take themselves seriously and try to reach emotional and intellectual heights that are far beyond what they can achieve based on the resources available (such as skills and intelligence of the director and actors and quality of the screenplay). There is nothing more annoying than directors who have no understanding of their abilities and who end up inserting childish and immature emotional and philosophical nonsense in their action flicks.
Good trash, on the other hand, tends to know its limitations and has the intelligence to try not to pretend that it can be more than what it actually is.
Thus, Wanted does not attempt to tell us about emotions or human frailty or love or what makes the world go round or this or that. Wanted just wants to entertain through action, dark humour and visual effects. It makes no apology for what it is and it does not try to marry this action with any kind of depth; it is what i would call good and honest superficial entertainment.
One feels several influences in this film about an average young man (played perfectly by James McAvoy) who learns that he is the son of an assassin, himself a member of a secret guild that dates back hundreds of years. Part of the overall concept and many of the action scenes are reminiscent of The Matrix (1999), some of the gun-fighting sequences bring Equilibrium (2002) to mind and one can detect attempts here and there at a bit of a Flight Club (1999) pace and feel. Other action flicks will undoubtedly be mentioned in connection with Wanted, but in the end, Timur Bekmambetov who previously directed Night Watch (2004), manages to come up with enough visual candy, good acting, great action sequences and just the right amount of dark humour to make Wanted a fun experience.
Perhaps they should have added a disclaimer that no rats were harmed during the filming of this movie…
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One Response to “Wanted”
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Jarrod Says:
May 19, 2009 at 21.02This film was bad … really bad. It wasn’t clear who was instructing the scrolls that were being weaved. This power didn’t appear to have much control over the people carrying out the tasks, so why did they. It is an example of a good comic not translating into to a feature … at all.