WANTED

Written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan
Directed by Timur Bekmanbetov
Starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Common and Morgan Freeman


Wesley Gibson: I’m finding it hard to care about anything these days. In fact, the only thing I care about is the fact that I can’t seem to care about anything.

I don’t usually say things like this but there’s just something about WANTED that brings out the boy in me so you’ll just have to indulge me. WANTED is awesome! Seriously. Awesome. Well, it’s awesome and also oddly preachy and condescending out of nowhere. And I guess if I’m being completely honest, it is also ludicrous. I mean, essentially, you’ve got this guy, Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) and, unbeknownst to him, he is the son of one of the world’s greatest assassins. Apparently, the ability to hit a target in the most impossible of scenarios is passed on from one generation to the next. (See, I always thought it skipped a generation but I’m hardly an expert on the subject.) Meanwhile, what’s he doing with this gift? Nothing. He is sitting around, wasting his time as a number cruncher in a cramped little box, I mean, cubicle, while letting his supposed best bud get away with nailing his girl on the side. (I apologize if that was offensive to any female readers but WANTED really got my testosterone pumping.) Frankly, I don’t know how this wussy little pushover even managed to get a girlfriend but he can also shoot the wings off flies so his having a girl is pretty believable by comparison. By the way, shooting the wings off flies … awesome!


Really, what is the more ludicrous scenario here? Is it any more unbelievable that there is a thousand year old group of assassins out there who kill bad guys before they fulfill their bad guy destinies than the reality that a vast majority of humanity gives the bulk of their lives away to the bad guys every day, contributing to their own slow deaths? When you think about how many of us are giving up our dreams, our hopes and our control over our own lives, it’s a wonder more of us don’t get up and become killing machines. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I work in one of these lovely boxes. I swear, every day I’m there, it’s getting a little smaller. So yeah, my friends had to hold me down to stop me from standing and cheering loudly when Gibson grows a pair and tells his boss to stick it before slamming his ergonomic keyboard into his best friend’s face. There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t want to tell everyone I work with (who hopefully never read my work) exactly what I think of them before breaking out into a musical number with full choreography announcing my departure.


Uh, sorry, my testosterone must have dipped there for a second. No problem though. Another screening of WANTED will fix that. Contemporary visual innovator, Timur Bekmambetov, crams so much manliness into his first Hollywood feature that men everywhere who see it will inevitably walk out with their hands firmly grabbing their crotches. They may even spit. Who knows? You’ve got colliding car chases, furious fistfights, enormous explosions and Angelina Jolie. The best part about all of this is that Bekmambetov ropes it all together with unpredictable ferocity. Sure there are unavoidable MATRIX inspired action scenes but once those are out of the way, the action always feels fresh and excitingly innovative. And while the stunts and scenarios are often shockingly brash, Jolie, as Gibson’s assassin mentor, is controlled and calculated, like a mechanical goddess. She appears to Gibson when he looks away for a second and for a while, it seems like he might be imagining her as a way out of his doldrums. Once she gets a few good punches in on him during training though, it becomes clear that she is definitely there to wake him up but his scars are most certainly not imagined.


WANTED is about wanting something from life, from yourself. It is about not giving in to the conformist existence so many of us fall into and choosing to walk a different path, a more exciting path. Now I don’t think it’s encouraging everyone to leave their desk jobs and kill people professionally. That has to run in your family, remember? There is no mistake though that Bekmambetov wants to wake you up. In fact, he gets a little aggressive on the subject in the film’s final scenes. This is the only thing that irked me about the entire experience. I had already had a blast the whole time that the energy itself was enough to get my blood boiling over the monotony of my weekday life. Up until then, it seemed as though he had sympathy for Gibson and the millions of us out there just like Gibson. But then, all of a sudden, he was pointing the finger directly at me and calling me a loser to my face. Still, maybe getting everyone angry is the only way to get anyone to actually do something about it.

ATONEMENT

Written by Christopher Hampton
Directed by Joe Wright


Robbie Turner: The story can resume.

Tap tap tap goes the typewriter. The tapping is coming faster and hitting harder. The pace is set and the race has officially started. Director, Joe Wright’s ATONEMENT bursts out of the gate from the moment it starts, as a pan away from a modeled replica of the Tallis manor reveals a parade of toy animals and ends aptly on the purported queen of this particular animal kingdom, Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan). Briony is only thirteen years old but she is just about to finish her very first play. This precocious child is captivating. She is at once frightening while just as frightened. Her focus is eerily burning and her need for command of the situation and those involved motivate her every decision. On this particularly sweltering day, Briony believes her play to be her greatest accomplishment yet and sees her future more brightly boundless than even before. She has no idea that everything is about to crumble beneath her. Chance allows her to witness a few things she was not meant to and before long she makes a desperate play to regain control of her destiny. Who knew that one little girl could cause so much trouble for so many people and invite turmoil into her family for the rest of her days by telling one misguided lie?


When Briony falsely accuses Robbie (James McAvoy), her sister, Cecilia’s (Keira Knightly) lover, of a horrible crime, he is arrested and sent to prison. It isn’t clear whether Briony was aware of how serious her accusations were or how far Robbie would be taken from Cecilia and his future as a result but it is clear that she interrupted a love of immense proportion. ATONEMENT’s first act goes back and forth between Briony’s breakdown and the escalating sexual tension between Robbie and Cecilia. Cecilia is not your typical period drama maiden. She is provocative and sharp-tongued. For all her fierce self-awareness though, she has made a point to repress her longing for Robbie out of respect for status. Robbie too has been hiding how he feels to appease the rules that apply to status and boundaries, not so much out of respect though but rather for blind tradition. Society’s restraints cannot hold back a love of this magnitude. The passion bustling between them is palpable and exacerbated by the heat; it is no wonder that it all comes to a head on this fated day and is halted no sooner than it is just begun. As they are only given the chance to wet their lips with each other’s taste before being ripped apart, theirs is a relationship that will live in a suspended state of foreplay for a long time to come.


When Robbie is taken prisoner, ATONEMENT shifts into a new and noticeably different movement. The intensity carefully crafted in the first act dissipates as the characters enter their own individual limbos, left to meander aimlessly in search of repair. The build toward Briony’s lie was punctuated by a sharp, concise score by Dario Marianelli and highlighted by Seamus McGarvey’s bright and elegantly fluid cinematography. Both artists employ entirely new approaches toward the action that unfolds in the lie’s aftermath. The score becomes dark, somber - less driven and more haunting. The visuals follow suit, feeling heavy and dense. The change halts the flow of the film and feels like a misstep momentarily. Once you catch the breath you were holding previously, the severity of the scenario sinks in and the fresh aesthetic takes on its own significance. It cannot help but feel longer or slower in comparison but how else are we or the characters expected to feel when they are living their new lives lost and haunted by a past they could not control? Besides being relevant to the tone of the story, the shift also gives birth to a four and a half minute shot depicting the 1940 evacuation at Dunkirk Beach that is mesmerizing in its grace and awesome in scope.


ATONEMENT is a fresh and surprising spectacle. Wright impressed with charm and poise last time out in 2005’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (also starring Knightly) but his latest grabs the period drama by its snotty superiority and turns it inside out, thanks in no small part to Ian McEwan’s much loved novel of the same name. The gravity of how one bad decision can ruin many lives resonates loudly and the guilt that follows gives way to the need for forgiveness from those who were hurt and from the one that caused the pain. ATONEMENT does not judge Briony for what she’s done; instead it allows her the chance to heal and make things right without ever presuming that her recovery is inevitable. For breaking convention and for demonstrating sincere respect for the story, the characters and the audience, Wright has absolutely nothing to be sorry for.