I’m going to commit a film-critic sin and suggest Wanted is a better movie from director Timur Bekmambetov than the acclaimed films he made in his native Russia (Night Watch, Day Watch). I don’t know if it comes from working underneath a major studio’s watch, but Bekmambetov exercises much-needed discipline here. Wanted is precise when it needs to be and chaotic when it can afford it. Loosely adapted from a comic book series, Wanted stars James McAvoy as a wimpy office drone whose cubicle life is turned upside down when a lithe killer named Fox (Angelina Jolie) recruits him to join a secret network of assassins. Like the Matrix pictures, Wanted slows down time, so that we can follow the curve of a bullet and the split-second decisions the characters make before the bullets hit. Like Bekmambetov’s Russian pictures, Wanted also favors dingy apartments, rats and characters in need of a bath. I don’t know if that will be enough to satisfy his early fans, but if Hollywood is what it took to reign in the filmmaker’s seizure-inducing mania, then I think he should move there permanently.
