Military Movies - Military Times

Bloody thrill ride

Sometimes, especially in summer, it’s nice to sit back in a theater, relax and let a movie kick in the side of your head.

That’s what happens with “Wanted,” a genuine thrill ride that has the added bonus of being an action movie you don’t have to turn your brain off to enjoy. You might have to disable the part that tries to process plausibility, but that’s no great loss. The fun you’ll have watching James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie bend the paths of bullets and such will more than make up for it.

McAvoy, best known for his roles in “Atonement” and “The Last King of Scotland,” plays Wesley Gibson, an office drone so bored with his life and situation that he can’t even get it together to care that his best friend is sleeping with his girlfriend. There seems to be no end in sight to his ho-hum existence until the day he’s at the drugstore and a woman shows up and explains that the guy in the corner is trying to kill him.

Bam! The man’s gun might as well be a starter’s gun, kicking the movie into another gear. Gibson and the woman, whom we learn is called Fox (Jolie), are off on a chase scene that involves not just high speed and extreme recklessness but a serious reconsideration of the laws of physics, as well.

Turns out Gibson’s father, whom he never met, was a master assassin, a member of a centuries-old shadowy outfit called the Fraternity, run by a man named Sloan (Morgan Freeman). Gibson’s father has been killed by a rogue member, and the Fraternity wants Gibson to avenge him.

In addition to being experts in weaponry and such, the Fraternity members also possess the ability to bend the path of bullets after they’ve been fired. Why not just aim differently? For one thing, this skill allows them to shoot around objects in their path. Plus, it looks really cool on screen.

The film is based on a graphic novel by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. Director Timur Bekmambetov captures this world convincingly. While searching for social value here is a mistake, the swipes at mindless office culture and meaningless consumer culture are somewhat reminiscent of “Fight Club,” while the visuals owe a more obvious debt to “The Matrix” films.

Freeman is always a welcome presence, especially in morally conflicted roles, and Jolie is quite good as Fox — it’s always nice to get a reminder that she is more than just fodder for tabloid headlines. She and McAvoy have a nice chemistry as she brings him along in his assassin training.

But it’s very much McAvoy’s movie (well, his and Bekmambetov’s). The idea of a hidden form of genius lying dormant, only to be brought out by surprise, is always intriguing, and McAvoy sells the surprise and the evolution. Even his look, his physical presence, changes. By the end of the film, when he poses a stunningly direct question to the audience, he’s a different character completely.

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Rated R for bloody violence, pervasive language and some sexuality.

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