“I don’t know who I am!” wails a banged up and bloody James McAvoy somewhere in the first third of the new super-slick action flick Wanted. And while that existential admission—identity, the quest for self—may be the heart of this futuristic assassin tale, it’s certainly not the film’s soul. That, as it turns out, belongs entirely to flashy special effects and crunchy sequences of violence. Did somebody order another comic book movie? We can’t tell whether Wanted wants to have a message, a purpose above high-octane explosions and highly implausible mayhem, or if it really just aims to make the viewer say, “Wow!” The former is something it seems to attempt and then abandon; meanwhile, the latter it drives home with steely resolve. At the center of it all is good old Mr. McAvoy, last seen pining over Keira Knightley in 2007’s sensual epic Atonement. Here, he pulls a clever career 360 to inhabit Wesley Gibson, a nobody office drone with an anxiety problem, an overbearing boss, a

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Site: Artist Direct Feed: Reviews () Url: http://www.artistdirect.com/na... Views: 3 Added On: 2008-06-27 15:20:55

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