WantedI just got back from seeing the movie "Wanted." To be honest, I'm feeling very conflicted about this particular movie. This movie was based on the original concept for a comic book series. As the writer of the comics was writing the story he took it in a slightly different direction, but the studio bought the rights to the original concept, which is what became the movie. I've briefly skimmed through the trade paper back of the comic, also known as a graphic novel, and I found myself very unimpressed with the brief segments that I looked at. I was actually looking forward to the movie when I first heard about it, but then looked through the graphic novel and changed my mind. That should have been my first clue that this movie would not be great. Visually speaking, the film is stunning. The action sequences involving trains, jumping cars, and curving bullets are all amazing to watch. The set design was pretty impressive, and it takes place in Chicago which definitely earns points with me. However, there is more to a movie than just the production values. The story is far from great. The basic story is about a young man who is manipulated by a league of assassins to kill the man that is killing members of this league. It is not apparent from the beginning that the guy is being manipulated, but as the story proceedes you learn that the leagues has been extremely deceptive about their motives for everything that happens in the story. What is originally thought to be a league of assassins executing fate becomes a group of pawns for one man's greed and lust for power. Deception. Lust. Greed. The three major motivators in this story, and there's not a positive characteristic among them. Combine this with the gratuitous amounts of violence and swearing, throw in a few brief sex scenes that do not drive the story any where other than to demonstrate the hatred this man has for his best friend and his girlfriend, and you have a winning combination for a losing movie. If a movie was nothing more than a bunch of neat action scenes strung together to look cool, then I would be able to feel better about having seen this movie. Unfortunately, a movie is more than that and has a story. In this case, the cool production features of the movie do not make up for the story and and I find myself wishing I had spent my time more wisely. There are any number of things I could have spent time with my roommates doing, but we chose to waste almost 2 hours watching a film that ultimately was not beneficial for any of us. | 