Wild About Wanted!

It’s hard to imagine a more sinfully enjoyable summer movie than Wanted, the high-octane, bullet ballet directed by Timur Bekmambetov (who made the visionary Russian sci-fi epics Night Watch and Day Watch), which opens Friday from Universal. Scottish dreamboat James McAvoy plays the put-upon accountant named Wesley who endures abuse from his coworkers and swallows anxiety pills by the handfuls. One night in a pharmacy he comes under attack by a sinister gun-toting man (Thomas Kretschmann) and is rescued by a mysterious agile triggerwoman named Fox (Angelina Jolie) who whisks Wesley to a remote castle-like fortress set-up and introduced to a secret society of assassins into which he is recruited. Why? because the father he never knew was one, and was targeted by the killer in the pharmacy, and now it’s Wesley’s turn to step up to the plate. Wesley’s training is incredibly brutal and what follows is so loony and outrageous, you're kind of bitch-slapped in your seat as the movie catapults along from one bullet-spraying adagio to the next.

This movie reminded me of other kick ass, action-packed, cinematic excesses that have tickled me -- Shoot ‘Em Up, Crank Running Scared -- movies that seemed drunk on their power to dazzle with stylistic fury but also had a sardonic chuckle underlying the graphic-novel-come-to-life mayhem. Jolie is a perfect glove-like fit in the part, as she slyly smiles as Wesley bristles at his new role in life. During scenes when she's hanging through a windshield of a car and shooting upside down at her nemesis she is a sleek, gorgeous, tattooed, avenging angel.