Saturday, 23 January 2010

Wanted

Starring the Academy’s very own James McAvoy this graphic action flick tells the story of a man who discovers he is the son of a dangerous assassin so leaves his mundane office life behind to be trained as a killer himself. I think this is a very interesting idea dealing with sensitive but universal topics. The only danger is that Hollywood can often sugar-coat or glorify subjects and if that subject is murder it could end up communicating a very bad message. I think Wanted only just gets away with it because of the plot twist. I am hoping to view Taken since as far as I can discern this is playing with the exact same fire.

Some of the action and special effects were quite interesting but I was a little disappointed in the writing. It felt sadly contrived and one-dimensional especially in the opening which lazily was nothing more than a voice over listing ‘protagonist problems to be fixed’. Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan (the writers) obviously didn’t have much imagination between them when it came to dialogue. I felt sorry for poor James whose character’s vocabulary was so limited we could hardly make out his lines through all the fffs. I’m not trying to be condescending but this film was an example of business burying the art. Its purpose was to sell popcorn. Dodgy to think that the targeted popcorn-buying audience was probably fifteen year-old boys, yet over here the film was an 18. Did they go too far with the blood? How does this kind of content affect our minds? Hey, it makes money; the studio couldn’t care less about our minds…

1 comment:

  1. I loved Wanted! Like Taken and Crank, it was an excellent example of a modern day version of 80's action-style movie. Big. Dumb. Fun. High-concept. That's all that has to be said on the matter. Not every film needs to be criticised for lack of depth. They're not meant as art pieces, only as entertainment!

    Though Taken is a much better film and I know you'll have problems with that.

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