“Wanted” a Movie Review
Yes, you read the title correctly, I’m doing a movie review. Quite unexpected since I know absolutely nothing about reviewing movies. However, I’m making an exception in this case because I got the opportunity to see the movie Monday and it does not come out in theaters until Friday. What was the occasion? TechCrunch, where I just started my internship, teamed up with MySpace to do a screening of Wanted in San Francisco for 200 lucky TechCrunch readers. Actually let me revise that. 200 TechCrunch readers and get this, the first 50 MySpace users in line who added Wanted to their top 8 friends and printed their profile. Needless to say, the theater was a rare blending of the two completely opposite crowds of people.
So what about the actual movie? Wanted pulls its style from a variety of different action movies. First it borrows a little bit of The Matrix‘s disregard for Physics. Mix in Shoot ‘Em Up‘s abundance of manslaughter. Finally throw in a high speed car chase plus gunfight that is standard for any action movie and you’ve got Wanted.
Luckily the “curving bullets” thing doesn’t end up being as lame as it looks in the preview. Instead it serves as a nice touch that differentiates the movie from every other action movie. Although it’s really entertaining to watch the actors shoot a “curving bullet” because it looks more like they are throwing a baseball sidearmed than shooting a gun.
The movie is such that when it finishes and your sitting in your seat as the credits play your thinking to yourself “either that was really dumb or it was freaking awesome”. Ultimately you cannot decide which it is so you compromise and declare that it was both.
Unfortunately the movie has a piss poor name. After seeing the movie I still cannot determine why they called it Wanted. I am sure that people will remember the movie 5 years from now but absolutely no one will remember its generic title. They’ll say, “Oh yeah! the curving bullets movie with Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman! What was the name of that?”. Ultimately no one will be able to remember and they’ll have to look it up on IMDB.
Despite my criticisms, the occasional cheesy dialog, and not-so-stellar performance by James McAvory, Wanted is a good movie and I recommend seeing it. If nothing else it is very entertaining. But honestly don’t take my word for it because like I said, I know absolutely nothing about reviewing movies. Nor do I have any authority on the matter. Instead I referrer you to Rotten Tomatoes where Wanted is currently at a very respectable 93%.
