Wanted

I saw Wanted last night.

It was absurd, but watchable, mostly because of the sheer audacity and silliness of the action sequences.

The story involves a nerdy accountant who finds out that his father, who abandoned him and his mother, was actually a member of a secret group of super-assassins. This guy takes medication for anxiety attacks, but it turns out that this is actually a mental skill that allows him to enter slow-motion world and do things like shoot the wings off flies.


He gets trained by getting beat up and stabbed and then soaking in a bath of secret formula that "stimulates white blood cells" and lets the assassins heal up quickly.

All pretty silly, but fun to watch. Until we learn that targets for assassination are dictated to the guild by The Loom of Fate, an actual loom that for 1,000 years has been spelling out the name of targets in binary code, which is apparently only decoded by one guy, Morgan Freeman (gee, how could a system like that go wrong?). Which just compounds silliness upon more silliness, so that you either decide you can't handle it and you stop watching or you entirely switch off your prefrontal cortex. I tried, and mostly succeeded, though I think the first half (the hero learning who he is, going through training montages, etc.) was much better than the second.

Anyway, it's worth watching just for some of the goofier, over-the-top action sequences, or if you your women emaciated and tattooed, for Angelina Jolie.