James McAvoy of ATONEMENT stars in WANTED as Wesley Gibson, a wimpy accountant who suffers panic attacks, especially when his mean bitch of a boss yells at him. Wes is so wimpy that even his live-in girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend at the office.

Enter a beautiful assassin named Fox, played by Angelina Jolie. She saves him from an apparent assassin in a deadly shootout and car chase along the streets of Chicago.

Fox is part of an elite, centuries-old group of assassins with God-like powers called the Fraternity. The Fraternity is pledged to carry out the unbreakable orders of the Loom of Fate, which tells them which bad guys to assassinate in order to restore balance to the universe.

Sloan, the Fraternity’s enigmatic leader played by Morgan Freeman, wants Wes to learn to become an assassin so that he can kill the man who betrayed and killed his father – the same man which Fox says was trying to kill Wes.

After an intense training that almost kills him before he begins, Wes learns to control the strange powers within him. He learns, however, that someone has rigged the Loom of Fate for their own ends. Only by learning to control his own destiny will Wes be able to survive.

The eye-popping action scenes in WANTED are peppered with bloody, wicked-cool shots of human destruction, an excessive amount of strong foul language, two sex scenes (sadly, neither one homoerotic), and brief nudity (sadly, not male). It’s a rough-and-tumble shoot-‘em-up enterprise with a redeeming story and compelling characters. This movie ends up being far more believable than Ben Stein’s terrible film EXPELLED : NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED. In the end, the movie’s occasional references to Fate give way to a celebration of existential delight, where each human being controls his own destiny. This is a positive message that we should encourage children, young adults, even ourselves and our friends, to warmly embrace and to live out in practise. In fact, in the movie’s last shot, Wes, the protagonist, overtly challenges the audience to follow him down this path. He turns to the camera and says so, nearly word for word.

Needless to say, when taken altogether, WANTED strikes MOVIEGUIDE® as potential OSCAR™ material. Hence, it deserves our highest legally-possible acceptability rating, Plus Five. Parents should be ensure that their children, especially their teenagers and young adult children, get caught up in the edge-of-your-seat, thrill ride roller-coaster excitement of WANTED.
Dr Ted Baehr
http://www.movieguide.org