WantedDirected by:-Timur Bekmambetov
Produced by:-Marc Platt,Jason Netter,Jim Lemley
Written by:-Michael BrandtDerek HaasChris Morgan
Starring:-James McAvoy,Morgan Freeman,Angelina Jolie
Music by:-Danny Elfman
Distributed by:-Universal Pictures
Running time:-110 min.
Country:-United States
Language:-English
Budget:-$75 million
Gross revenue:-$62,118,000 (US)
Wanted is a 2008 action film loosely based on the comic book miniseries Wanted by Mark Millar. The film is directed by Timur Bekmambetov and stars James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Thomas Kretschmann, Konstantin Khabensky and Angelina Jolie. Production began in April 2007. Wanted was released on June 25, 2008 in the UK and June 27, 2008 in the US.
SummaryThe film opens with a man known as Mr. X (David O'Hara) walking into a building in Chicago. He goes into a room and speaks with an Indian woman to find out who made a particular bullet for a "competitor". The conversation is interrupted by a sniper shooting the woman from a nearby building. This prompts Mr. X to run back into the elevator, where he performs a breathing exercise which causes his perception of time to slow. He then dashes down the corridor at amazing speed and makes a spectacular leap through the window, across the gap between buildings, eliminating all his opponents in mid-flight. As he assesses his fallen enemies, a dead sniper's phone begins to ring - a call from a man he calls Cross (Thomas Kretschmann). Cross tells Mr. X the snipers are decoys, who looks down and realizes that he is standing on top of an X mark on the ground. Cross then says goodbye as he fires a multi-stage bullet through Mr. X's head from miles away.
The scene then turns to Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), a seemingly insignificant accounts manager in an unnamed firm. He lives a monotonous and unrewarding life, subject to frequent abuse from his boss, and suspects(accurately) that his friend and coworker is having sex with his shrewish girlfriend. He feels his life is summed up by an attempt at self-Googling; which produces no results. In addition, he is a hypochondriac, prone to panic attacks, which he takes Ativan to control. However, his perception of time seems to slow during these attacks - just like Mr. X.
One night, at a grocery store, Wesley notices he is being stalked by Cross, but doesn't pay any mind until a mysterious woman (Angelina Jolie) suddenly appears next to him, telling him that his father, Mr. X, was an elite assassin who had been killed on top of a building the day before - by Cross. The woman opens fire, and a shoot-out in the grocery store leads to a car pursuit in the streets, with the woman and Wesley making a narrow escape.
He wakes up the next morning at the base of The Fraternity, a thousand-year-old secret society of assassins who kill those who threaten to bring the world to chaos. The group's leader, Sloan (Morgan Freeman), introduces Gibson to Fox, the woman from the night before, and invites him to follow in his father's footsteps as an assassin. Sloan first decides to test Wesley by making him shoot the wings off a fly. When Wesley refuses, a gun is put to his head, triggering a panic attack - during which he manages to shoot the wings off several flies.
Sloan explains that Wesley's "panic attacks" are actually an untrained manifestation of a rare superhuman ability which allows his heart to beat at an abnormally high speed, flooding his bloodstream with equally abnormal high levels of adrenaline. This causes his perspective of time to slow dramatically, granting him superhuman reflexes and strength. This trait is genetic, inherited from his father - and with his father's death, he also inherits his father's fortune to do with as he wishes. But Sloan is offering more than that - he is offering Wesley his father's position within The Fraternity, signified by his father's gun. Wesley, already overwhelmed by the day's events, refuses and leaves.
Wesley wakes up the the next day thinking that everything was a dream, but discovers his father's gun and finds over $3.6 million in his bank account. Confirming the claims made by Sloan causes him to have an epiphany - he can be more than what he is. He tells off his boss and quits his job, knocking out his philandering friend's teeth with his keyboard (the shattered keys and teeth spelling out "fuck you") as he leaves. Fox is waiting for him outside to give him a ride back to the Fraternity headquarters - an unassuming textile mill.
Wesley immediately begins training to make full use of his abnormal adrenaline surges and join the Fraternity. The Repairman desensitizes him to pain through daily bludgeoning. The Butcher teaches him various forms of close combat; hand-to-hand and knife fighting. Fox teaches him parkour. The Gunsmith teaches him marksmanship, not only with normal firearms but also the Fraternity's smoothbore weapons which are able to "curve" specially etched bullets in a manner similar to expertly pitched baseballs.
The training is brutal, and is only endurable with the assistance of periodic medicinal baths that accelerate healing. While recovering in one of these baths, Wesley meets the Exterminator (Konstantin Khabensky), a fellow Fraternity member named for his use of mini-bomb-bearing rats. He muses to Wesley of thousands of mini-bombs set upon a target.
Wesley makes amazing progress over due time but seems unable to master curving a bullet around a piece of hanging meat. Eventually Fox stands in front of the meat and Wes is told to shoot around her at the target. Once he finally succeeds, his training complete, and Wesley is given orders to kill people from The Loom of Fate, a cloth spinning machine that gives the names of the targets through a binary code hidden in the weaving of the threads, a process which Wesley initially finds suspicious.
While on his first assignment, Wesley hesitates in killing his target while riding by on the top of a train. In the next scene, he questions Fox, "How do we know who is bad or good?" She responds by telling him a story of a young girl. The girl's father was a prestigious judge who was handling a sensitive case, and the case's defendant had put a hit on him in order to get a judge who could be bought off. One day a hired killer held the young girl at knife point as they waited for her father to return home. The killer lit the father on fire as the young girl watched, then he branded his initials into her neck, which was the signature of his work. Fox explains that the killer had been targeted by the Fraternity several weeks prior to the events of the story, but their assassin had failed to carry out his duty. Fox then explains that is what the Fraternity does: kill one, and save a thousand. Wesley notices that initials are scarred onto her neck, indicating that the young girl in the story was her. The scene switches back to Wesley firing and curving the bullet to take out the target, revealing that Fox's story was told in a flashback prior to the assignment taking place.
Wesley is then given a second assignment - which he accomplishes easily with limited assistance from Fox. He then returns to his apartment to retrieve his father's gun - and encounters Cross upon leaving the building. Gunfire is exchanged and Wesley pursues Cross, but accidentally kills The Exterminator in the process. Cross takes this opportunity to "curve" a bullet into Wesley's arm. With his dying breath the Exterminator tells Wesley, "thousands."
Wesley analyzes the bullet from his arm and traces its origins - it is an expertly engraved bullet that might as well be autographed, the work of a renegade Fraternity member named Pekwarsky (Terrence Stamp). Sloan grants Wesley permission to personally investigate Pekwarsky despite Fox's protest that it could be a trap. After Wesley leaves, Sloan hands Fox a new kill order from the Loom - Wesley.
Wesley and Fox travel to the Fraternity's original base of operations in Europe, an abbey all but identical to the textile mill. The two easily capture Pekwarsky and force him to take them to Cross. The meeting leads to a confrontation between Wesley and Cross on a moving train. Fox steals a car and crashes it into the train, eventually causing the train to derail when it reaches a bridge over a deep ravine. Wesley, Fox, and Cross hang on for their lives as their cabin dangles from the bridge. Wesley is about to fall, but Cross catches his hand to save him. Wesley unhesitatingly shoots him. Before Cross dies, he tells Wesley that everything the Fraternity told him was a lie, and that he is his real father. Fox confirms the truth and explains that Wesley was the only one who could kill Cross not because of his superhuman talent, but because the only person Cross wouldn't kill was his son. Fox raises her weapon to shoot Wesley, but Wesley shoots the glass underneath him, plunging into the river far below.
Wesley awakes in a medicinal bath in an apartment across the street from his former apartment, courtesy of Pekwarsky. Upon inspecting the apartment he discovers it belonged to his father, who had been monitoring him his whole life. Pekwarsky hands Wesley a loom weaving and tells him to decode it. Wesley is shocked to discover Sloan's name in the weaving. Pekwarsky explains that Cross went rogue due to this discovery. Since then Sloan has used false weavings to direct the Fraternity as mere contract killers. Wesley realizes that Cross had never actually tried to kill him in their previous confrontations - he had been assassinating Fraternity members to keep them away from Wesley. Pekwarsky departs after giving Wesley plane tickets, stating that his father wished him a life free of violence and chaos.
While investigating the apartment further, Wesley discovers a secret room containing all of his father's weapons, maps, notes, and battle plans. He even finds a supply of The Exterminator's mini-bombs, realizing that The Exterminator had been working with his father. Consumed by rage and seeing his opportunity, Wesley devises a plan to take out Sloan and the Fraternity.
Wesley begins the first phase of his plan by filling a garbage truck with rats gorged on explosives-laced peanut butter, "arming" a number of the rats with the Exterminator's mini-bombs. He then crashes the truck into the Fraternity compound, thus flooding it with pseudo-smart bombs. After all the rats explode, he charges in, killing all the Fraternity members he encounters, including the Repairman and the Butcher. Upon Sloan's office, he finds himself surrounded by Fox and her fellow master assassins. Wesley tells them that Sloan is killing for profit by providing his killers with fake instructions from the Loom. He then attempts to kill Sloan, but is disarmed by Fox.
Fox then asks Sloan if this is true. Sloan then reveals that all of their names had come up in the weaving, and that he had merely acted to protect them. He then goes on to explain that if they truly believe in the code then they should all commit suicide right where they stand. Otherwise, they should kill Wesley and live a life of freedom - or more appropriately, world domination. The other assassins seem to agree with Sloan, but Fox, who fully believes in the code, turns on her fellow assassins. She curves a bullet to kill the entire circle of assassins, including herself. However, Sloan has already escaped.
Wesley, penniless once more, returns to working in an office, under the new name of J.G. Millar, an homage to the two creators of Wanted, Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. He once again Googles his name, which again yields no results as Sloan appears with a gun to Wesley's head. "Wesley" turns around, and is revealed to be a decoy. Sloan looks down to discover an "X" of post-it notes. Sloan mutters "oh fuck" as a multistage bullet bursts through his forehead, fired by the real Wesley who is sitting a mile away. Just as in the comic, the film ends with Wesley breaking the fourth wall, addressing the audience, and listing his recent accomplishments, ending with him saying: "This is me taking back control of my life. What the fuck have you done lately?"
Box office performance
In its opening weekend, Wanted grossed $50.9 million in 3,175 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #2 at the box office and averaged an estimated $16,100 per theater, the $50.9 million opening excceeded the analysts projections of $30-$35 million opening weekend! , Wanted grossed more in its opening weekend than any previous live-action film starring Angelina Jolie.It has grossed a total of $83,177,985 worldwide so far.
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