Abe Goldfarb Reviews WANTED

Abe Goldfarb was so riled up by WANTED he asked me if he could review it for Parabasis.  I said yes. Here it is. Enjoy. I sure did:

   It’s always sort of amazing when a movie you don’t like affects you in some profound way.  Normally, the films that change or touch us are uplifting or intellectually challenging or too beautiful for words or SOMETHING.  However, it is safe to say that after watching Wanted, most viewers will know where they stand on a number of topics.  Might makes right, for example.  Pre-emptive attacks.  How much pity we really ought to have for the modern white male.  Or screenwriting.  Probably screenwriting.  Wanted is the most morally vile, structurally inept piece of dogshit any studio has released in a long time, and to discuss why it is requires a certain amount of spoilage.  If you’re dead set on watching it, then read no further.  Only know that if you love this movie, truly love it, or take some serious enjoyment of it, on some level you hate humanity.

      This sounds like hyperbole, but it really isn’t.  Wanted hates everything.  It hates animals, it hates women, it hates authority (except when it’s in the hands of its protagonist), and it REALLY REALLY REALLY hates you.  Seriously, it hates you.  The film’s last shot all but tells you to go fuck yourself.  Wantedis better than you, apparently.  Wanted doesn’t need you.  Wanted has nothing but contempt for the soulless sell-out you are.  Look inside yourself and you will find that you are wanting compared to Wanted, a film with such purity of purpose that it’s sometimes hard to see it through the layers of idiotic nonsense it’s sitting under, like a slice of cake hidden under ten pounds of coconut sprinkle.  See, Wanted knows what’s wrong, man.  And it’s not afraid to say it to your face.  If you can’t take it, well, you’re a pussy.  A big, fat, blubbering, emasculated pussy.  You fucking pussy.

      (Lest you think I’m overdoing it, the film uses this word as punctuation)

      Wanted is the story of Wesley, a corporate wage slave who suffers through his daily existence.  He has panic attacks he has to be medicated for.  His hot girlfriend is constantly banging his office pal (the bitch!).  His boss (an obese woman, the bitch!) bullies him.  He’s broke.  And one day, it all changes.  He discovers that he is, in fact, the heir to the fortune and skills of his suddenly dead absentee dad, a world-famous assassin.  Dad, you see, worked for The Fraternity, a group of killers who have, for the last thousand years give or take, killed according to the dictates of the Loom of Fate.  What’s that?  Shut up, pussy, I’m getting to it!  The Loom of Fate is, unpredictably, an actual loom, the weave of which lets The Fraternity know who needs to die in order for equilibrium to be maintained.  And they have never missed a target, which has sent their consumer confidence rating through the roof.  Why, say, Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot never made the list, I can’t imagine.  But hey, the Loom of Fate is the Loom of Fate.  If their names didn’t come up, who are we to question it?  Anyway, Wesley joins up and learns to kill, fight, and defy physics.  Plus, he makes time to beat the shit out of the people who tormented him in his former life.  What a guy!

      Who’s keeping score on the woman here?  One is a faithless, big-titted whore (the film is terrified of sex), and the other is a fat asshole.  The other two women in the film do much better than this.  One is a nice Hindi woman who gets her head blown off three seconds after we meet her, and the other is Angelina Jolie.  This would be great for Angelina Jolie if she had anything to do besides act as a teenage boy’s jerk-off fantasy and a status marker for our hero.  Seriously, she makes out with him to make him look cool in front of his ex.  And sometimes she shoots stuff.  But mainly, she hangs out looking good, shooting some stuff, and showing off her ass.  At the end, for the greater good, she shoots herself in the head, leaving us only with the slut and the Jabba.  If only she’d shot the protagonist (but more on that later).

      Before we get to what’s really wrong with Wanted (I mean, besides its none-too-latent misogyny), let’s deal with the basics.  The film is exceptionally well-acted, in its way.  James McAvoy is a fine performer, and here he deploys a terrific American accent and surprising physicality.  Jolie effortlessly steals the picture by being Angelina Jolie.  Morgan Freeman probably had a house payment to make, but he seems to be paying attention most of the time, which is nice of him.  It’s lensed with vigor and verve by Timur Bekmambetov, the Russian director who made the grandly amusing Night Watch movies.  The action is, though frenetic, pretty coherent and easy to follow, which comes as a godsend in the age of Michael Bay, and the choreography of it is often very inventive.  In fact, Bekmambetov, with the right script, could probably make a really, REALLY good action movie.

      But this isn’t it, and here’s why: The main character is a shiftless douchebag wuss (“just like the rest of you” his voiceover tells the audience; thanks, Wes!) until he discovers his destiny, which is to parade his existential authority by killing for fun and profit.  Once he’s found his path, he’s a smug jerk who’s better than you are and never lets you forget it.  Because an actor like McAvoy, who I’ve yet to see deliver a false moment (even when playing a fucking man-faun in Narnia), can’t help but deliver the character with fidelity, he’s totally doomed here.  He’s playing a irredeemable shit who finds his bliss in being a bully and is continuously patting himself on the back for it.  Anyone who identifies with Wesley (and based on box office receipts it’s safe to say a lot of people at least enjoy watching him) should have to undergo counseling and maybe meet a girl one of these days.  It’s a character, and a whole movie, that flatters the worst, most narcissistic impulses of the two most noxiously self-pitying groups on the planet: teenage boys and angry white men.  And then it shits on all of us by telling us we don’t measure up.  The last line of the film, delivered to the camera, is, “I kill people for a living.  What the fuck have you done lately?” This would be funny if Wanted had a dash of self-awareness, but no such luck.  It MEANS it.  Wanted is an attitude in search of a script.

      Speaking of which, I’d mention the writers who crafted it, but I honestly don’t feel like it.  It’s safe to say, however, that they’ve seen Fight Club and The Matrix.  Why?  Because the first half hour of this movie steals so baldly from them that it’s a wonder no legal action has been brought up.  Wesley’s corporate life is, down to the in-your-head narration, taken wholesale from David Fincher’s masterpiece.  And when Wesley has the wool pulled from his eyes, it turns out there’s this grand design that only a few chosen people can see, and he’s one of them; a black-clad superman who can bend the laws of physics.  Sounds a lot like…no, never mind.  But what Wanted misses is the entire point and perspective of those two films.  Fight Club is about the comic-absurdo dangers of white men who think they’re put-upon.  Rile them up enough, spiel some dime-store Nietzsche and it’s brown-shirt time.  The only way out of it is to, you know, grow the fuck up, and Fight Club is ultimately about the passage to adulthood.  Wanted finds liberation in transgression and forgets the part about growing up.  And the Matrix films, like them or not, are ultimately anti-authoritarian and pro-community.  Once we see what’s really going on, our choice is to either live life as a solitary drone or connect with the people around us and change our world for the better.  In Wanted, seeing the truth behind everything means understanding that you’re better than everyone else and lone-wolfing it.  Once the film starts telling its own story, it’s so totally incoherent that it may as well go on forever.  The film is written as a series of montages passing time between action scenes, and the montages start to blur after about ten minutes.  And its major act of rug-pulling is so without logic that it hardly bears discussing.  Suffice it to say that, if a certain character or two are telling the truth, nothing else in the film makes any sense at all.  And if they’re not, the film is even more reprehensible than it seems to be.

      Beyond that, the Loom of Fate?  It’s clearly meant to be the hand of God.  And all that God says in Wanted is, to quote a particularly listless line reading from Freeman, “Kill this motherfucker.”  That’s it.  That’s this film’s vision of a higher power.  You could say that it’s only one of God’s ways of communicating, but it’s the only one on show in this film, and thus implicitly the only one that exists.  And how on earth do these assassins make so much money?  They don’t work for anyone, really, they just follow the orders of the Loom/God.  Does the Loom pay well?  Once they’ve read the fabric do they sell it at a premium?  And why is the fine German actor Thomas Kretschmann in this for five minutes, delivering ill-thought-out exposition?  And who the hell casts Terence Stamp and gives him nothing to do?  And where the hell is it supposed to be set, fucking Elsinore, Michigan?  WHAT THE HELL IS WITH THIS MOVIE?!

      “But it’s cool!  It’s popcorn entertainment!  You’re overthinking it!” people will say.  No.  For once, no.  I’m sick of making excuses.  I’ve seen enough of the good stuff to know that there is pure entertainment out there that doesn’t demand a “yeah, but…”  Peter Jackson makes big spectacles with oodles of action that appear to have been crafted with something like love and intelligence, not to mention respect for his audience.  Shoot ‘Em Up is a non-stop action comedy with a sneaky, subversive agenda (it may be the only film to feature lactating hookers and a pro gun-control message) and a real aesthetic.  Wanted is corrupt, stupid and boring, a big, fat congrats to anyone who’s ever picked on someone and a huge fuck you to anyone who pays money to see it.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film with an uglier soul than this one.

      “But hey, car chases!”

      Shut the fuck up.

Comments

[jaime]

Fucking awesome post there, sir. To continue the spoilage, *why* does Angelina blow her brains out?

[Abe Goldfarb]

Oh, because she finds out that The Fraternity's chairman, Morgan Freeman, has been falsifying hit claims from the Loom. And that all the members of The Fraternity (except McAvoy) have had their names come up. So, in a moment of purest honor, she uses one bullet to pierce the skulls of every man in the room plus her own.

Seriously.

[Joshua James]

Haven't seen it, doubt I will find time to see it with the baby and everything else, but I thought I'd note that one of the writers, Derek Haas, is a regular at Artful Writer, in the forum there . . . he was very open to asking questions (though this was before the strike) - he and his writing partner also wrote 310 TO YUMA, which I really enjoyed, one of my favorite movies from last year.

[Abe Goldfarb]

I loved 3:10 to Yuma. But this doesn't even feel like the work of the key grip on that picture.

[Simon Crowe]

What did you expect? Wanted is an above-average R-rated action movie based on a comic book (graphic novel, whatever) that's made for people who are, well, fans of the genre. It's completely in love with its own absurdity (the loom) and style and doesn't seriously attempt to make any larger statements about humanity.

On the other hand, Wall-E (a movie marketed to children) asserts that all human crestivity, industry, and spirituality will simply disappear one day because nobody gives a crap. Since this is in large part a blog about theatre, I'm a little surprised no one here has a problem with that.

[Abe Goldfarb]

I have no problem with Wall-E's politics because they're essentially correct: if we let consumer culture and "labor-saving" convenience become the primary thrust of our lives, we will eventually become big babies who make their environment unsustainable. This is not a million miles removed from reality. And by the end of Wall-E, humanity makes the decision to give a crap. That kind of faith in humankind inspires me. It's a perfect film for the young because it's funny, silly, romantic without being sappy, outrageously beautiful to look at, and an uncondescending statement on their responsibility to the world around them. Why is that troubling?

Wanted is based on a graphic novel that was in part a meditation on comic book morality. In the graphic novel, our main character (modelled visually on Eminem) finds that his father was the head of a society of supervillains, not assassins. And by the end of it, he chastises his audience for being foolish enough to trust him. It is infinitely more complex in its dialectic than the film, which simply posits the world as "wolves" and "sheep", finally coming down on the side of the head wolf.

I'm a fan of the blow-em-up comic book genre. A big fan. I unironically love tits, explosions, car chases and stunts. And Wanted was so vile I could barely stand to look at it.

[Abe Pogos]

Abe,

you write about popular culture as well as anyone I've read online. Have you thought about starting your own blog? The blogosphere would certainly be a richer place if it got a more regular dose of your insight and passion, and I'd get a vicarious thrill out of reading a blog run by someone called Abe.

[Jennifer Gordon Thomas]

Best movie review. Ever. I agree w/Abe (above). Don't be daft, Goldfarb....write more.
But if you get any smarter or more talented I shall have to put a hit on you.

[Ehren Gresehover]

I've read a similarly furious review of WANTED before this one, and it got me thinking, because I really had a lot of fun. I think that I saw the film as being a little more self-conscious than you are giving it credit for, which I think makes a world of difference. I do think that the movie is mostly adolescent wish-fulfillment, for the sort of adolescents who suddenly find themselves in adult bodies and with adult jobs and yet still don't feel any more in control of their lives than they were when they were teenagers.

**SPOILERS**

I think the final scene is so over the top with tying up loose ends (with that impossibly magic bullet) that it flaunts even the movie's own strained implausibility. Coupled with the narration, and the fact that the dude was doing this whole thing from his couch, I took it to be a bit of self-parody, and left the theater feeling like it was a call to action to a very sedentary group of dudes, in a language that they would understand.

That being said, I realize that this reading is problematic, and the script itself is incoherent at times. I just didn't feel like this was as awful as say, The Squid and the Whale, in which the director actively hated his characters and the audience, and did a really good job of getting it across.

[Abe Goldfarb]

I think that's a very interesting reading of it, Ehren. I disagree, but it's at least well-reasoned. My problem is that the "call to action" in this case is more of a "call to arms". It's a recruitment video for bullying machismo. In a weird way, watching this film, I couldn't help but think of school shooters, not to be exploitative of a very real tragedy. It's about a downtrodden loser who suddenly discovers that their true calling is as a murderous overlord to the idiot drones around them. Anyone who feels empowered after watching this film needs to examine what about it pumped them up so much, and it's not a film that encourages sincere reflection.

I think Wanted is only self-conscious in the sense that it keeps wanting to top itself. In a better film, I'd have applauded the macabre invention of using a thousand rats as explosive devices. In this one, however, it just read as another way in which it had no respect for life at all.

I don't, by the by, think that morality is the cornerstone of film criticism, but when a film hits me as this one did, it's a problem NOT to discuss it.

I mean, it's no Hostel. Ahem.

[herxanthikles]

Yeah, I would probably read a book-length critique of Wanted if it was written by Goldfarb. Give us more, give us more!

For the record: "grandly amusing" perfectly and concisely sums up my experience of the night watch movies

3:10 to Yuma was a bitter disapointment to me, given the quality of just about every actor in the cast. After it ended, by chance Crowe popped up on T.V. on an uncut nocommerical l.a. confidential into the wee hours and I ended up watching that to my great delight to remember what a transcendent genre picture was really like.

[Prince Gomolvilas]

Are you kidding me, Goldfarb?! You actually make it sound like the Best. Movie. Ever. I'm going to go see it again in your honor. :) Seriously.

[Abe Goldfarb]

Then there's nothing I can do to help you, Prince G. However, you are sentenced to three consecutive showings of Ichii the Killer.

[Abe Goldfarb]

A masterpiece, by the way. Lest you think I was smacktalking it.

[Mark]

I keep seeing the title of this post and thinking that Isaac wants readers to provide reviews of Abe Goldfarb. For example:

"Moving performance in In Public! Goldfarb mines the script for comedy while never losing sight of the play's deeper meaning."
"A memorable performance in volume of smoke!"
"World's Funniest Person in that Athiest Play. He sings, he dances, he tells jokes!"

[cgeye]

Glad my instincts told me to skip this one. Even Angelina Jolie can't salvage everything. Thought of you, Abe, when I passed by the inevitable vendor at a street fair that had it on DVD. If the description of the comic on IO9 made me ill, why should I want this movie in my home?

Might I suggest as a palate-cleanser HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY? Cheesy, beautiful, fast and funny, and full of heart.

[cgeye]

I'm thinking that the world cinema market America caters to -- you know, the cinema market that development execs use as the excuse why women or minorities or non-violent stories not pegged for Oscar noms never get made? -- eventually would lead to these type of pictures being made.

Authoritarian, fascist films disguised as libertarian boys' own movies.

Movies that speak of liberation only through the lenses of guns, pussy and killing the old boss, 'cause the new boss gives boys lots of toys and the illusion that they have more freedom through violence and misogyny.

Inevitable, really.