Wanted

Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted is a masterclass in directing style. It is a violent screaming orgasm from when this testosterone fuelled teenager first realised they loved terrible movies, and the dumber the better. Mixing every damn stupid cliche you've ever dreamed of, and a inventing a new truckload that'll be stolen for the next ten years. Really, if you dismiss movies that are "far-fetched" (a term used by the ignorant who do not dare to dream of silly and outlandish things), This Is Not For You. Close the door on your way out.

Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy, sporting a rather decent Chicago accent) is a nobody. A minion in a suit and tie, like many of us. After a panic-attack from hell, he is picked up in a supermarket dungeon by Fox (Angelina Jolie, sporting a wardrobe that will delight the aforementioned teenagers), and prior to a really, really awesome car-chase invents a means for entering a moving vehicle I have never seen before. He is the son of Cross (Thomas Kretschmann), a member of the Fraternity, a thousand-year-old society of assassins, headed up by Sloane (Morgan Freeman, mostly doing his refined and patented Uncle Tom schtick). Does he choose to return to his minion life? Only to offer everyone who's wronged him an industrial sized dose of attitude, and some boiled over bull-shark rage.

Admittedlly, the Fraternity assignment selection methods can be questioned - dished out by a loom (I am not making this up!) for subsequent binary decoding. One also asks the quick question whether fate has self-correcting mechanisms should an assassin fail - and a failure story is told with grave consequences. I digress, like Team America - one heavy montage later, and Wesley's one of these bullet-bending and stunningly efficient assassins who pull off the unlikeliest of murders as easily as a hot knife slides into butter.

Okay, we're not kidding when this is steadfast power-fantasy piffle. Reality checks, don't leave them at the door - bury them in a lead-lined vault guarded with wolves. And yes, this is another of those movies that do not exist to tell a story, rather leave its fans gurgling in slack-jawed yokel joy at the wonderful and superbly imagined nonsense - where masterful self-contained action vignettes are threaded through with superb efficiency. It sports gun battles we have not seen the like of since Chow Yun-Fat shot his way through a hospital in 1992's Hard Boiled, improved with digital effects that are not remarkable for their technical skill, but for their imaginative. Yes, they're much, much better than the Matrix, dammit.

Not a drop of brains, or anything other than the faint echo of a beating heart on the soundtrack. For the rest of it, hang on tight.