Wanted DVD/BluRay review

 

The Film

Wanted is like an energy drink. You have a couple and then you’re wired, fidgeting, hyper, and when you come down, you’re sluggish enough to say “whatever”; you had your fun. Anyone expecting anything else from a summer film directed by Timur Bekmambetov, is gravely mistaken or stupid.

Bekmambetov has officially arrived in America, after directing some cool, albeit copycatting films from Russia. Night Watch and Day Watch are a lot of fun, creating some fun twists on vampires, but the films are visually compelling for their inventive subtitles and extremely hyper action set pieces. Although, he and the films wouldn’t have existed without The Matrix.

Wanted plays out like the fun 1980s action films we all love, but with incredible action set pieces, one topping the next, all ending in an orgy of bullets and mayhem. From the opening assassination, you’ll either be on board or not; the film just throws you into its world without warning or explanation. Visually, the film is the next possible step from Bekmambetov’s Russian films. Perhaps, he has evolved from the Matrix bullet-time effects to the next step too, something other copycats and even the Wachowskis couldn’t do.

While the nature of filmmaking is the suspension of disbelief, the story could’ve been more thought out as we are expected to handle its convoluted narrative. We can handle the far-out, gravity defying action, but when you tell us these secret assassins get the “To Kill” list from ancient weavers in a textile factory’eh, um, right. To be fair, Wanted is based on a comic/graphic novel, but from what I heard, the film is far removed from the comic. Despite the cornball plot, all of this is made easier to handle from a very game James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, and Angelina Jolie.

McAvoy handles this balance between an office wimp, who’s being cheated on by his girlfriend, being verbally abused by his boss, but is trapped, until he discovers the Fraternity. We’re with him as he transforms, and he does have some great lines of dialogue. Freeman plays his typical teacher role, but the script gives him some fun twists on that character. While Jolie isn’t anything special here, her presence carries the one note character as only she can.

But everything comes down to Timur’s outlandish action set pieces. He is only competing with himself, and if you’ve seen the trailer you kind of know what to expect, but he saves some incredible stuff for you as well. I think what he captures here is a better sense of a fun action film, without the wink, wink like Shoot Em Up had. Just don’t expect anything more than to see a raging, film version of our ID. Like I said it’s like an energy drink; hyper and fun when you’re on it, but after the come down, you’ll likely be worn out and nonchalant about the proceedings.

The Disc

Audio:  The audio sounds amazing. 

Video:  The video is extremely impressive. 

Special Features

Alternate Openning: This scene was pretty cool, but I like the opening from the theatrical cut better than this one.  

Cast of Characters: This is a pretty boring feature that shows the cast explaining the characters in the film.  Not that exciting.  

Extended Scenes:  There is really just one of McAvoy’s training scenes in the extended section, sorta weak.

The Art of the Impossible: A neat feature that illustrates how some of the special effects in the film were done.

Bringing the Graphic Novel to Life:  This feature shows how closely the filmmakers followed the graphic novel.  Not the best feature on here, but fun none the less.  

The Making of Wanted: The Game: In this feature developers talk about how they made the video game based on the movie, but that’s all they do, they don’t really show game footage.  Again, sorta weak.

There is also a U-Control feature, and a Motion Comics feature narrated by McAvoy and a few other BD features as well.  This is a fun movie, but the features were pretty weak overall.

Rating: