Wanted, round 2.

"As if in instant celebration of the Supreme Court's ruling on a citizen's right to bear arms - and of the newly articulated 'individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation' - the burly new fantasy Wanted reveals the magic that can blossom when you put a gun in the hand of a meek wage slave and tell him he was born to be a righteous killer," writes Richard Corliss in Time. "Directed at a pitch of gritty giddiness by the Kazakhstan-born Timur Bekmambetov, who did the DVD faves Night Watch and Day Watch, this hard-R splatter-fest about a team of sanctified assassins is also the summer's zazziest action movie."

Updated through 6/30.

When Slate's Dana Stevens first heard that Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy were being paired up in an action flick, "I believe my exact words were, 'She'll crush him like a bug.' 'Sounds pretty sexy to me,' said my interlocutor, giving me an unsolicited yet bracing glimpse into his fantasy life. He was right. For those whose fantasies include being crushed like bugs by Angelina Jolie (or beaten senseless by hulking Russian thugs, or forced to use dead pigs for target practice by Morgan Freeman), Wanted is a compendium of bedside erotica. I don't know when I've seen a mainstream movie that so explicitly caters to the S&M niche."

"There's no denying Bekmambetov's energy or enthusiasm: he blows people and stuff up with gusto," concedes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "But all his visual ideas, or at least the memorable ones, are borrowed... Things happen in Wanted, but no one cares. You could call that nihilism, but even nihilism requires commitment of a kind and this, by contrast, is a movie built on indifference."

"In some ways, Wanted... is your garden-variety summer action picture, delivering an assortment of sick thrills along with the mind-bendy special effects we've come to expect in post-Matrix movies," writes Stephanie Zacharek in Salon. "Wanted is fast-moving and bloody, enjoyable even within its unapologetically generic limits. But McAvoy is its real secret weapon: With his X-ray blue eyes and lips that look bitten with anxiety, he has the miraculous ability to fool us into thinking there's really something at stake here."

"[Graphic novelist Marc] Millar's key dystopian premise has been shelved, and with it, his supremely unattractive super-villains (including a Thing-like creature composed of serial-killer fecal matter), the use of random killings and rape as methods of empowerment, and rather too many sequences of peculiarly grotesque violence," writes Andrew Stuttaford in the New York Sun. "Instead, moviegoers will be treated to a mildly enjoyable piece of hyperkinetic hokum. Innovative it is not."

"Wanted makes an unusually mean-spirited break from such relatively warmhearted comic book movies as Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk," writes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post. "Whereas those PG-13 films have provided fun for at least most of the whole family this summer, Wanted presents hard-R fare for viewers craving nonstop violence, foul language and the overcompensating symbolism of big guns, loud cars and fast trains. (As for the preponderance of rats, we'll leave that for Dr Freud to sort out.)"

"Objectively, I award it all honors for technical excellence," writes Roger Ebert. "Subjectively, I'd rather be watching Danny Kaye in the film version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

"Wanted is a queasily unapologetic power fantasy about becoming a better person through violence," writes Keith Phipps at the AV Club. "As McAvoy learns to hurt, he heals a psyche wounded by the tiny emasculations of the 21st century. There's no humiliation, the film suggests, that can't be corrected with a well-placed bullet."

"Having pummeled us, Passion of the Christ-style, for an excruciatingly long haul, this exercise in ultraviolence then insults us by having a beaten, bloodied McAvoy inform viewers that he used to be a loser 'just like all of you,'" writes David Fear in Time Out New York. "Hey, Wanted, what did we ever do to deserve such punishment, except give you $12 and almost two hours of our wasted time?"

"Bekmambetov may commit grand larceny upon action flicks of yore, but it's hard to resist all the energy on display," writes Bradley Steinbacher in the Stranger. "By the third act, however, as the story wheezes to a climax, all the visual lunacy grows tiresome."

"It is an in-yer-face blockbuster like nothing else this summer, and it's going to be enormous," predicts the Telegraph's Tim Robey.

"Wanted straddles the line between the delightfully absurd and the merely ridiculous," writes Sam Adams in the Los Angeles Times.

Updates, 6/28: "Wanted is a tonally aggressive, wildly expressionistic, extremely violent, rude, foul-mouthed, yet satisfying film, a sleekly machined action powerhouse, words I hardly expected to type this summer." Ray Pride at Movie City News.

"As for the gun issue, well, it is only a movie. Right?" Robert Cashill: "But I've seen this movie before, played out in workplaces and streets and campuses, and if someone takes this one's simplistic message to heart in our nervous times I will be ashamed to have given eight bucks to its cause."

Update, 6/29: "For all its crassness, the picture is rather surprisingly affectless; and for all its putatively adrenaline-pumping fast-slow-fast-slow breakneck-the-laws-of-physics action, rather no big deal, leaving the audience impressed with its bright shine and noisiness, but hardly stirred or stirred up," writes Glenn Kenny - after spotting a potential trend.

Updates, 6/30: "At one point, meek Wesley opines that, if the hot chick in the office just saw him for who he really was instead of the wage slave that he had become, she'd recognize the fierceness of his soul etc," writes Bryant Frazer. "Wanted never once delivers the reality check this douchebag so richly deserves - as a matter of fact, it rewards him, and gives you the finger for expecting anything different."

"Would I sound like too much of a moral scold if I said that WALL•E symbolizes every good impulse in Hollywood filmmaking, and Wanted every corrupt one?" asks Paul Matwychuk. "Or would I just sound like someone who can properly evaluate the evidence of his own eyeballs?"

Posted by dwhudson at June 27, 2008 2:17 PM