[Note: The Jan-Ai Scholarship Drive will conclude with a forthcoming interview with artist Anne-Julie Aubry. Technical difficulties have caused this drive to extend beyond the originally planned week. In the meantime I need to start catching up with a long list of overdue book and movie reviews. Don’t adjust your sets.]

Last September I wrote: ‘With obvious nods to several video games, films of unrepentant violence both old and new, and a staunch pro-vegetable stance, Shoot ‘Em Up is a guilty pleasure with a capital “G”.’ I went on to describe just how much I enjoyed this guilty pleasure film. Fast forward to Thursday, July 3rd 2008 (that would be rewinding now, wouldn’t it?), replace the ‘staunch pro-vegetable stance’ with ‘thinly-veiled anti-donut stance’ and add in ‘comic book inspired’ and you would have a good one line description of the film Wanted.

It was outrageous. It was violent. It was profanity laden. It was cathartic.

What more could a guy ask for?

As I said in my review for Shoot Em’ Up, it would be irresponsible of me to represent this film as anything more than what it is. It is a guy-oriented, slickly produced, 110 minutes of physics-defying action and tongue-in-cheek brutality of the kind that awakens the inner-adolescent in me. Wanted had me leaving the theater warm in the satisfied glow of a summer popcorn movie done right.

Wanted is based on a comic book series by creators Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. And although the movie doesn’t follow the graphic novel in exact form, it certainly does so in spirit. Considering the fact that the U.S. gross is already well over the film’s budget (it has more than doubled the budget if you consider worldwide box office figures) I am sure that its creators are laughing all the way to the bank.

Wanted was exactly what I expected it to be. I wanted jaw-dropping visuals (and I’m not just talking about Angelina Jolie 😉 ), intense action sequences, sarcastic humor and a tiny amount of story. In truth I felt like I got all of that and a little more. Wanted tells the story of cubical slave Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy). Our first introduction to Mr. Gibson’s life shows that he is barely functioning in a Dilbert-esque office environment. A great deal of voice-over gives the viewer a glimpse of how Wesley views his own life. I have mentioned in other reviews that voice-overs can be a real movie-killer for me if they are done poorly. In this case I feel like they worked well in giving the viewer a humorous and self-effacing look through the eyes of Wanted‘s would-be anti-hero.

Not long into the movie Mr. Gibson is violently introduced to the world of the assassins guild known as The Fraternity. What follows is a plot that has certainly been done before–weak, picked-on boy/man becomes a man through a healthy dose of self-confidence gained by discovering his extraordinary abilities. What makes Wanted succeed is that it isn’t trying to break alot of new ground in the action hero/comic book genre–it is just trying to have fun.

If you’ve seen Mr. and Mrs. Smith then you no doubt know that Angelina Jolie is a kick-ass action star. She appears to have so much fun with this role, as she did in Smith, that she makes an over-the-top movie just a little more palatable. And James McAvoy can do no wrong with me. I have enjoyed him in every movie I have seen him in and Wanted is no different. He is the kind of everyman that everyday schmoes like myself can identify with. When he becomes the person he had locked inside of himself, his interactions with those who have done him wrong are extremely cathartic. And Morgan Freeman is just the best. Regardless of the quality of the films he is in, he stands out every time. He is such an enjoyable actor to both watch and listen to. Did he need to do a part in a film like this? Of course not. But like Paul Giamatti and Clive Owen in Shoot Em’ Up, I suspect he considered this role too much fun to turn down.

As I mentioned earlier, Wanted is violent. However, the film makers infuse the film enough wry humor, both in the dialogue and with visual gags, that it hovers along the cringe-worthy line without fully crossing over it. Speaking of visuals, this movie is a delight as far as visual stunts/action scenes go. Physics-defying and sometimes logic-defying…yes…nevertheless the action scenes were creative and unique as were the camera angles used in the filming of said scenes. This movie was pure fun.

I would give the film a 3 out of 4 stars. It certainly isn’t the kind of film that connects on a deep level. I won’t be re-watching this one in the same way that I do with films like Pan’s Labyrinth, looking for deeper meaning and connecting on many levels. No, this is what it is: it is a summer popcorn movie. One that doesn’t take itself too seriously and yet doesn’t devolve into a slapstick parody of itself. If that is the kind of movie watching experience you find yourself in the mood for this summer, with Wanted you cannot go wrong.