The Real Gun Guys

Movie Review - Wanted

**** Warning! ****

**** This review contains spoilers! ****

**** You have been warned! ****

Don’t cry to me if you read on and wish you hadn’t. I go into detail about the story and other things in the movie. If you want to know more and don’t care about me revealing the plot, continue on.

I had a free movie ticket coming and so I decided to go see the new movie “Wanted” last night.

Wanted stars Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, and James McAvoy and is rated R for Violence, Language and partial Nudity.

The first thing you should do if you intend to see this movie is forget everything you know about physics and guns. If you go in expecting to find a faithful representation of weaponry in action, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

The good guys and bad guys in this movie, both employ a technique called “bending” bullets, where you can put an “English” on the bullet as it comes out the muzzle of the gun and get it to curve around objects. Not only is this highly unlikely, but it borders on the patently absurd. Also, the representation of bullets in the movie is far removed from reality. At least twice in the movie we are treated to a slow motion flight of a bullet in which sections fall off and fins deploy like a cruise missile. Also, apparently the only thing that affects these movie bullets is a collision with another bullet, which happens with astonishing regularity. Flesh and bone do nothing to tarnish or distort these razor sharp, silvery, engraved projectiles which punch through almost any material with incredible force. Did I mention the incredible distances these guys are able to make head shots from? I didn’t? Well, let’s just say I’ve seen many cities smaller than the path these snipers bullets travel from rifle to target.

Cars in this movie fly and spin gracefully and a small sports car has enough force/mass to turn a large bus on it’s side instead of dissolving into a cloud of fiberglass and aluminum. Humans too have fantastic abilities in the movie. One man jumps through a glass window on the side of a sky scraper and flies ala Matrix to the roof of another building across the street.

Humans aren’t the only animals who do extraordinary things in Wanted. Rats, after being fed a mixture of peanut butter and liquid explosives, turn into little time bombs with just he addition of a watch and a blasting cap.

Now for the story…

One thousand years ago, a group of weavers (that’s right, I said weavers) decided to start an assassination cadre and began offing people a loom (that’s right, I said loom) tells them to kill. The hit list is generated by the loom in binary code (that’s right, I said binary code) deciphered from mistakes in the weaving. There’s no mention of what they may or may not have been smoking at the time.

Fast forward to today.

Young Wesley Gibson is a young man living in a horrible apartment in Chicago and working a crappy job while his slut girlfriend sleeps with one of his co-workers. He hates his boss Janice (Lorna Scott), an overweight, domineering woman and takes anxiety medication by the handful in an attempt to deal with his life. He is soon met by Fox (Angelina Jolie) who informs him that his long lost father, who left him when he was very young, was killed by a rogue assassin and he’s next on the killers list. Just then a rough looking guy named Cross (Thomas Kretschmann) shows up and the bullets begin to fly. What follows is a cool car chase through the streets of Chicago. The rough looking guy chases after them in a cat food delivery truck, keeping pace with an apparently underpowered sports car. Bullets continue to fly and then the sports car jumps a Police roadblock and knocks a city bus on it’s side and they make their escape. I guess that explains why the delivery truck was able to keep up with them if the small sports car had enough mass to turn a large bus on it’s side.

Our hero is brought by Fox to an abandoned building where he meets Sloan (Morgan Freeman) and is informed that his father was a super assassin and they want him to join them. When he decides to leave, they force him “shoot the wings off” of some flies buzzing around a garbage can. Apparently he can focus in on objects and his mind speeds up giving him an edge over everyone else, something he got from his father. Never mind that he’s never shot a gun in his life until that moment. Amazingly, he does this and leaves, at gun point. The five or six of them there just let him go…

The next day at work he gets accosted by his boss for a late report and he tells her off, quite satisfyingly too, I might add. On his way out he takes a computer keyboard to his (girlfriend fornicating) coworker, breaking the keyboard in half and knocking out a tooth, all in slow motion. There’s lots of slow motion in the movie… He decides at that moment to join The Fraternity. I guess the anger at his boss, not to mention the almost $4 Million which was deposited into his account by The Fraternity helped. He goes to The Fraternitie’s base, an old textile mill on the edge of town and is trained, sometimes rather brutally I might add. Lucky for him the weavers posses the technology to freeze him in carbonite…erm, heal his wounds quickly in a hot tub filled with either wax, or water with wax floating on top of it. Apparently this works wonders for he’s back on his feet again in short order. It is in these wax baths were we get to see Fox’s backside. Yummy! I’m not a big fan of tattoos, but on Angelina Jolie they look fantastic! Maybe I’m just biased…

So he starts his life as a super assassin, Fox guiding him at his side. Soon Cross takes another shot at him and after a short chase, our hero gets shot in the arm. They trace the (hollow spiral shaped) bullet to a bullet maker in Europe named Pekwarsky (Terence Stamp). That’s right folks, no run of the mill domestic bullets for them. He and Fox head off to Europe and confront the bullet maker, who under pain of being killed, sets up a time to meet Cross a the train station so they can take him out.

What follows is a running gun battle on the train in which Fox, left behind when the train started, crashes the car she’s driving into the side of the train so she can help our hero. This succeeds in damaging the train enough that it derails and several cars fall off the tracks and into the abyss below, killing hundreds. Wesley is about to join them when Cross grabs on to his hand to save his life. What does Wesley do then? He SHOOTS Cross, who then pulls him into the train car, which falls into the valley below and wedges between the two mountains. With his dying breath Cross tells our young Padawan something worthy of The Empire Strikes Back. It is then he discovers The Fraternity is actually the enemy and he makes his escape.

Pekwarsky brings him back to the USA and waxes him up real good, restoring his health. He tells him all about his dad and how he was always watching over him and didn’t want him to be involved with The Fraternity. After he leaves, Wesley discovers a plan to destroy The fraternity in a hidden room in his fathers study.

Soon after, our young hero crashes through the gates of the textile mill and releases his “Rat Bombs”, which all magically run into the building, not out of it and to freedom in the field across the street. A few seconds later his “Rat Bombs” explode, destroying parts of the factory and spreading mass confusion. He runs and guns his way into the building, killing everyone in his path until he gets well inside the building and is surrounded by Fraternity members and Sloan. He tells them all that Sloan’s name came up on the loom and he’d kept it secret, taking death orders for money instead.

It is then Sloan reveals that all of the assassins names had come up on the loom and they could either choose to kill themselves or keep killing people for money. Everyone but Fox decides to keep killing for money. The rest of them are about to kill Wesley when she “bends” a bullet, which travels in a complete 360 degree circle, shooting everyone in the head, including herself, without deforming at all. Neat trick that. Wesley chases after Sloan, but loses him.

An untold number of days later Wesley is back on the job, working late, when Sloan walks up behind him with a broom handle Mauser, of all guns, and gets ready to shoot him in the head. Wesley turns around, but it’s not Wesley, it’s a decoy. Sloan looks down at the floor and see’s an X made of post it notes and is shortly there after left with a big hole in his head. The bullet having come from a completely different zip code, avoiding obstacles and managing to fly through a donut hole, a soda can, several car windows and past many people from earlier in the movie on the way. What are the odds of that?

Wesley the turns to the camera and says something smart assed, and the credits roll. Don’t bother staying for the credits, there’s nothing to see afterward like there are in some films, Crank for example.

Did I have a good time? You betcha! I had a blast! Would I see it again? Yes again.

I give it two thumbs up, even with the above mentioned shortcomings. If you’re wanting to see a movie where reality is treated as reality, don’t go see this movie. If you don’t care and are just wanting to have a good time, check your brain at the door, you won’t be needing it.

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Wanted

To be honest, I can’t decide whether to see this movie or not. Mostly this is because of something from the previews. The idea that you can put an “English” on a bullet and cause it to curve around someone or something and hit the target behind them seems ludicrous to me. I suppose it might be theoretically possible, but it is highly unlikely to happen in real life. I’m sorry, but something with this glaring an error in it totally destroys any suspension of disbelief I may have been willing to have. I might go to see it anyway, who knows. Angelina Jolie is apparently a gun owner in real life and has said some positive things recently…

Here’s the movie poster:

Say, do you find this poster offensive? Do you think it’s something little kids shouldn’t be exposed to? Are you a hoplophobic parent living in Los Angeles who was robbed at gun point eight years ago? If you answered yes to any of the previous, you might write a blog called Los Angelista’s Guide To The Pursuit Of Happiness.

I stumbled upon this blog recently and the latest post contains so much PSH it’s a surprise the local megamart isn’t sold out of Depends.

Consider the following:

Now, “Wanted” is definitely on my list of films to check out this summer, mostly because every time I see the slick preview for it, I get all, “Whew, that looks awesome!” and, “Angelina is hawt!” Plus, Morgan’s acting is always a fave of mine and McAvoy is pretty easy on the eyes and a good actor as well.

Indeed, I plan to see the film sometime in the next three weeks while I’m away in the Midwest, preferably someplace where one measly movie ticket isn’t almost $13 like it is at my local theater. However, just because I want to go see this flick, that doesn’t mean I want my kids to see these gun glorifying advertisements, especially when they’re a mere block away from my child’s school.

My first thoughts were, yes that is a big gun. A larger than life gun. The handle is almost as wide as Angelina’s arm. I know she’s skinny and all, but dang, that’s just ridiculously massive. I’ll admit I was pretty shocked to see such an advertisement up where kids can see it.

But I didn’t need to share all those thoughts with T so I just told him, “Oh no, honey. Guns are not cool and I don’t like that picture because guns are very dangerous and they hurt people. Remember, you should never touch one.”

I support teaching kids to respect guns and gun safety, I support supervision of children around guns. What I don’t support is the type of hysteria the above author exhibits on the subject. It is children who aren’t taught to be safe and respect what a gun can do who later use them unsafely. Regardless of what his mother tells him, the child still thinks that guns are cool. And what’s even more, she’s now imbued them with magical qualities and powers in his eyes. My parents didn’t allow me to have any type of gun when I was little, that includes cap guns and BB guns. Guess what I played with when I was over at friends houses that had them?

Yes, guns can hurt people, and I can understand her bias, having being robbed at gun point, but lot’s of people have had bad experiences with criminals who misuse guns. I myself was involved in a home invasion when I was younger. A man with a rifle forced his way into the house one night and if it hadn’t been for pure dumb luck, I’m not sure what would have happened. Now I’m a gun owner, but I don’t go around robbing and killing people, neither do my guns. They have no evil gun rays which turn ordinary people into criminals, and they have no will of their own. You don’t have to live your life in fear of an inanimate object. I also don’t own guns because I live my life in fear. I also have fire extinguishers and smoke detectors, do I live my life in fear there might be a fire? I have a first aid kit too, but this doesn’t mean I’m anticipating something bad happening. It’s called being prepared.

Look, instead of fearing what you don’t understand, take a gun safety course. After that, go to a range and shoot with a competent instructor. Take the fear and mystery out of the equation. You don’t have to like guns, but you don’t have to fear them either. And please, teach gun safety to your child. My youngest is the same age as the kid in the post above and even she knows that if she finds a gun, to not touch it and to find an adult and tell them about it. My kids see daddy’s guns all the time, and yes they think they’re cool. But they know what they are capable of doing and must ask permission to touch them, and only while daddy is there so I can supervise. If not being cleaned or used, they reside in a locked cabinet that only daddy has the key to. The guns, not the kids.

Oh, and about the poster above…the only real thing I don’t like about it is Angelina Jolie is breaking rule three.

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More than just a pretty face?

Apparently, Angelina Jolie has been doing some upsetting things lately. Upsetting to liberal Hollyweirder’s that is.

She’s been supporting the troops big time and even getting the kids into it. Not only that, but she’s bought her son Maddox a gun charm necklace and toy guns to play with, in addition to a military themed birthday party.

Oh the horror!

Angelina Jolie shocked a whole plethora of her liberal Hollywood friends earlier this month when she took to the editorial pages of the Washington Post and made it clear that she supports the US Troops in Iraq and also supports their mission. Now she is teaching her oldest son Maddox to do the same.

According to a report from OK! Magazine Maddox is making his parents proud by making packages that will be shipped to U.S. troops overseas. “He gets the other kids involved like an assembly line,” and Angelina insider tells OK! “Zahara loves to glitter and sticker the cards!” The friend says Maddox came up with the idea all on his own. “He’s growing up to dream big and thinks even the tiniest thing can make a big difference.”

…and…

Maddox has fired off a fashion statement.

The 6-year-old son of Angeline Jolie and Brad Pitt sported a gold gun charm necklace during a New Orleans bike ride with his family on December 18, Pitt’s 44th birthday.

The boy has always had guns on the brain. During an October 28 spree at KB Toys in Sherman Oaks, California, mom bought him a Warrior Playset and a $34.99 Nerf Dart Rapid Fire gun. His parents also threw him a military-themed birthday party when he turned 6 in August.

Maybe there’s hope for Hollywood yet…

Links here and here.

(h/t)  Knowledge is Power

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