Monday 4 August 2008

Wanted

I just went an saw Wanted tonight with my youth leaders. It was their idea, so I can't discourage it when they want to create a bit of fellowship. Had it been my idea we would have watched something wholesome like Mamma Mia.

Firstly may I say, that reflecting on my leaders' meetings this year, I think they have been the most silly and unproductive meetings that I have ever run. I have a wonderful time, but we generally get 20 minutes worth of stuff done in an hour and a half. But we get about 70 minutes worth of dumb jokes, eating and general mirth in. So I reckon that's pretty good.

Plus I made meat ballettes tonight and they weren't terrible. So this was good too.

**Spoilers Ahead**

Anyway, Wanted. Long story short, it was dumb. I haven't seen a more amoral movie for a long time. It was rather fun, and had cool shooting. Lots of cool shooting.

But in the end it was pretty silly. The premise is, there's a Fraternity of Assassins who are guided by the Loom of Fate. The Loom of Fate constantly weaves a fabric with a secret binary code in it. When the Head Assassin decodes the fabric it tells him the name of the next person who needs to be killed. The assassins obey the loom and kill the target.

In case perhaps you think trusting a loom to delegate your assassination targets is a tad risky, Angelina tells James McAvoy a story about a homicidal maniac whose name once came up but the assassin didn't kill him so he killed a judge. "Kill one, maybe save 1,000", it's the Assassin's Creed, we're told. This of course clears everything up, if the loom once spat out the name of a homicidal manic it must be right. And if there is a possibility you might save 1,000 people, well, why not play the odds?

They neglect to deal with the fact that during one assassination they derail a train and kill everyone on board by plummeting them into a ravine. Kill one, kill a couple of hundred.

The film ends with a message for the viewer-our hero turns to the camera and says "What the f*** have you done today?" right after he's shot another man in the head. The moral is: if you have a dead end job, and everyone walks all over you, get buff and kill some people. No worries.

But did I mention the film looked cool?

Garth Franklin said "If a young John Woo had made love to an ILM graphics server - this would be the offspring."

They was an awesome scene when they filled a factory with exploding rats, shortly followed by an assassin who kills around 30 people, in about 5 seconds (all in slow motion) using mostly guns that he's taken off the people he's killing. It really is something to behold.

So my verdict? It's definitely worth seeing, it's just not worth paying any attention too. I love a bit of good action but I think it's even better when they at least try just a little bit to plausibly justify the violence.

However I reckon it was probably a lot better than Mamma Mia. Guns and amorality or Abba songs and no guns. It's a no brainer.

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