Wanted film review

certificate_18

WANTED

Wanted is the action thriller of 2008. A hugely entertaining escapist fantasy, this is a film that grabs the audience by the throat and doesn't let up until the closing credits. It's easy to see why Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (Day Watch, Night Watch) is currently the hottest name behind the camera in Hollywood: this is possibly the best movie of its type since The Matrix.

Also making an American studio debut - or at least a debut as an action star if you discount his role in Atonement - is James McAvoy, who only enhances his already stellar reputation as the film's central character. McAvoy is Wesley Gibson, a dweebish company drone who begins the film as the world's most put upon guy. He has a cubicle-based job he hates, a boss who wants his behind on a plate and a best friend who just happens to be sleeping with his girlfriend. Oh, and he also suffers from pretty severe panic attacks. McAvoy is thoroughly believable in these early sequences, most of them filmed with a great deal of humour, but it's what happens next - a Neo-like transformation into one of the world's deadliest killers - that marks it out as a great performance.

All of this is even more impressive considering that he is in an ensemble with two of the world's biggest film stars in the shape of Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. It turns out that Wesley has a secret skill which gives him gold star membership to the 'Fraternity', a shady mix of killers and weavers (yes, that's right, at one point there is a sort of talking loom which spins various yarns about who they should kill next). He has to undergo basic training, which sees him nearly die on several occasions, before he can be unleashed on his victims, notably the deadly Cross (Thomas Kretschmann), a renegade assassin responsible for the death of Wesley's long-lost father.

Or is he? The thing about comic artist Mark Millar's story is that while on the one hand it is utterly preposterous, it is also full of some rather intriguing and clever twists once you accept and believe the world presented before you. And - in Bekmambetov's hands - this is an extraordinarily rendered world.

From the opening assassination sequence and subsequent car chase to the concluding shootout, Bekmambetov never lets up: it's ultra-stylish, hyper-kinetic and a great deal of good old-fashioned fun. It's also a rare 18 certificate studio release, which makes it all the better: this is proper grown-up entertainment.

Paul Hurley