YOU don't have to like gunplay and fast cars to like Wanted, but it helps. You don't even have to want bloody punch-ups and mewling guitar solos on the soundtrack. You do, however, need a high tolerance for repetition since Wanted reckons if a point
is worth making once, it's worth making several times, from several angles, often in slow motion, whether it's impossibly curving bullets or James McAvoy, shirtless, demonstrating that he now has a gym card.
Drumchapel's finest plays Wesley, an average Joe stuck in a dead end job with an emasculating boss and a girlfriend cheating on him with his best friend. On the plus side, he has an untapped ability inherited from his estranged and recently deceased dad: an adrenaline rush that gives him superhuman reflexes and responses.
This attracts the attention of a secret organisation called the Fraternity, a group of assassins whose initiation ceremony consists of regular bloody beatings from the other assassins, followed by a long soak in the communal bathroom. So far, the Fraternity sound as ominous as Sunday League rugby.
Actually, it's more like a bullet-ridden Fight Club for Nuts readers, with the hormonal surge provided by Angelina Jolie as McAvoy's personal trainer. In keeping with the film's clunkiness, her character, Fox, is sly and sexy, rather than apt to go through your bins at night. Wanted actually requires tattoos to be added to her collection of body art, and in some scenes she resembles one of those community walls the council puts up so kids can get tagging out of their system.
Mostly, her job is to cock triggers and look scrumptious. When she and McAvoy race each other across the tops of urban trains they are loose and fun together. But I'm getting weary of watching stars flee explosions, throw knives, and be indestructible this summer. Are there no actual human beings left in Hollywood? Is everyone a superhero? Wanted is probably McAvoy's attempt to stretch himself into less polite territory, but, while he's fine here, mostly you're just grateful he isn't Josh Hartnett or Hayden Christensen. Still, expect comic book geeks and Jolie supporters to form a pimply, hormonal box office-clogging collective until school starts.
On general release from WednesdayThe full article contains 385 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
