Wanted

Mini Review:
Wanted is a film about a secretive group of Assassins called The Fraternity. These assassins take out targets with the justification that ‘To kill one is to save one thousand.” They employ a skillset that is undoubtedly awesome, but not particularly realistic.

When I first saw the trailer for the film, my natural geek defence mechanism (scepticism) kicked in. There is a section that shows the protagonist firing a bullet from a pistol at a target, curving its trajectory by swinging his arm up from his waist as he fires. The first thought to cross my mind when I saw this was “Sif”, but the more I thought about it the more I came to understand the pure awesome that was literally seeping from the screen. Months later, I decided that I had to see this film.

Fiction in which the protagonists have some sort of super-human power is fun. Let’s face it, it’s Science Fiction bread and butter. Unfortunately for those of you with great ideas, you need to put some thought into the “science” behind those powers. If you leave things like this unexplained, you risk shattering your audience’s suspension of disbelief. I found that Wanted suffers from this. We never really did get a clear explanation of the origins of the powers the assassins utilised, the source of their contracts or the rules around what they can and can’t do.

This means that when a character gets shot or misses a target they’re aiming at you are left wondering “Why they didn’t use their I-Win ability?”

A good example of this done right is the (brace yourselves) Star Wars and Star Trek universes. The amount of work that is put into the stories of every race, extra, character and piece of technology used is painstakingly detailed. Take the Star Wars Incredible Cross-Section books for instance.

So in short, this movie is worth a watch but don’t expect it to blow you away.
3 stars.