Eagle Eye (**1/2)

EAGLE EYE

Somewhat entertaining, gimmicky techno-thriller sabotaged by its own preposterousness. Eagle Eye, an intelligence-gathering AI program turns into Skynet's overly patriotic, equally crazy girlfriend. Eagle Eye should have just built time traveling Terminators. Would have been a huge improvement. Credibility of the plot stretched far beyond breaking point. Steals from every other movie where a "computer turns on humans", including the very similiar Wall-E just three months ago, and The Simpsons episode when they had a robot house. Even reduces itself to cribbing from Stealth and sends a robot plane to shoot missiles at Shia LeBeouf and Billy Bob Thornton. Why do sentient computers always think missiles are the best way to resolve a problem? Eagle Eye's plan to make Vic Mackey President of the United States is ill-advised at best. There's a shocking swerve where Eagle Eye calls Michelle Monaghan and gives her a secret order. Only Shia and complete retards were surprised the order was "shoot Shia." I did like Eagle Eye's impatience when Monaghan hesitated. Rosario Dawson's idea of acting like an Air Force liaison was to let her pants suit handle most of the performance. There's a nice scene on a plane between LeBeouf and Monaghan where the bullshit took a break and they were allowed to have a quiet character moment together, but overall Eagle Eye is a Greco-Roman thumb to the eye.

Smallville 8x2 - "Plastique"

ROLL CALL:

SUPERMAN! CHLOE SULLIVAN! LOIS LANE! JIMMY OLSEN! (MIA this week) TESS MERCER! (Oh, Miss Tessmacher/Mercy. I get it.) DOOMSDAY! (The Armageddon Paramedic) THE GREEN ARROW! (Also MIA)
Special DC Universe guest star
PLASTIQUE!

Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Smallville. If that's what the new Smallville is gonna be like, count me in. I was pretty wowed and very pleased by the new direction of this show. The first five minutes of Lois and Clark at the Daily Planet was better than every single Daily Planet scene in Superman Returns combined. I don't think Clark has ever been funnier.

"This is a nice shirt!"
"A phone booth?"
"As long as I don't have to wear a tie."
"If I can keep my secret from you, I can handle your cousin."

The biggest howler was after Davis Bloome blew the Chloe engagement and asked Clark not to say he said anything: "I won't reveal my sources."

Follow that up with the hilarious delivery of this line to Chloe re: her engagement to Jimmy Olsen: "Is there anything you wanna tell me?"

Lois was also funny, especially the face she made when she said Jimmy Olsen's name.

Clark: "You're willing to share a byline with me?"
Lois: "Oh God no!"

That's exactly right! It's really too early to say how the rest of the season will shake out but they came out of the gate very strongly with the Lois and Clark competing reporters dynamic. I even LOL'd when Lois took a red marker and "corrected" the obituary Clark wrote.

Even without a tie and glasses, Clark out of the flannel and running around in grownup clothes was pretty striking. When he was wearing his borrowed blue dress shirt and pulling people out of the exploded bus, you can almost see Him. Just imagine the S and the red cape billowing and it's Him. It's really Him. In fact, Clark has never acted more like Superman. His speech to Plastique was very Man of Steelish. He wasn't even being a dick the whole episode.

The set up for the supervillain team Tess Mercer recruited Plastique for made my comic book nerdy self very happy. I hope they do the slow burn throughout the season and that they do pull the trigger on the Justice League vs. the Legion of Doom.

I even liked Doomsday. The little tease of him naked in the alley and seemingly transforming back to human was very nice. So it seems he does become a monster. If this vastly improved incarnation of Clark continues, I might actually be sad if Doomsday kills Clark. A year ago, Clark's gruesome death would have been the ending to Smallville I preferred. Not so much now, if this keeps up.

Next week, the not-so-Secret Origin of the Green Arrow! Color me actually excited.

The House Bunny (**)

THE HOUSE BUNNY

Occasionally amusing bad movie. Comic timing was way off throughout. Jokes funny on paper blown in execution left and right. Constant mixed messages; movie had no clue whether it was glorifying Playboy or mocking it. Tried to have it both ways and failed. Yet at the center was Anna Faris giving an earnest comedic performance. Very endearing. Emma Stone was also good. Kat Dennings was unrecognizable prior to makeover. Colin Hanks did a Luke Wilson impersonation. Probably the best runner was Hefner so distraught at Anna Faris leaving the Playboy Mansion all he could do was eat Haagen Daas on his bed for days, but even that joke never found its sure footing. Still, I know what I hate and I didn't hate this.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (**)

THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE

 

** SPOILERS IF YOU STILL CARE ABOUT THE X-FILES **

The X-Files: I Want To Believe was like a reunion with old friends you now have nothing in common with. Yet you're stuck there for a couple of hours pretending like it's the old days until a requisite amount of time has passed for the ordeal to be over so you can politely excuse yourself and head on home.  

I Want to Believe is a dour, sleepy, unnecessary movie that fails to justify its very existence 6 years after the TV series limped to an end. Standing outside The X-Files' twisted mythology, with no aliens, black oil, monsters, Cigarette Smoking Men, Lone Gunmen, conspiracies, or even the X-Files division of the FBI, all we are left with are Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, two relics from the Clinton decade who look like they want to be there even less than we do.

Time has passed Mulder and Scully by. Mulder looks pasty and tired. The courageous nut who once had the ability to wittily coerce not just Scully but millions of audience members to follow him on whatever lunacy he was investigating barely musters any enthusiasm. Scully's attractively rigid face has only gotten frownier and more right-angular in the years since the series ended. Scully and Mulder live together in some shack in the woods, sleeping together and having long, boring arguments that they seem to conduct on autopilot. They used to have sexual tension that has since dissipated, but it hasn't been replaced with a new dynamic. Their ghosts from the 90's want to continue to argue and debate belief vs. skepticm while their flesh and blood selves go through the motions but couldn't care less. They had a son but now they don't. He's barely worth a passing mention in an awkward bedroom scene that was more about Mulder's Grizzly Adams beard irritating Scully neck than anything else. 

Mulder is now a fugitive recluse. Scully is a physician and apparently also a surgeon working for a Catholic hospital that doesn't seem to make enough profit to pay their electric bill because the lights are never on. It's a gloomy, depressing hospital of deep shadows and glowering doctors and priests. I imagine the suicide rate for patients admitted into such a forbidding place must be a cause for concern. Scully has a subplot of a young boy dying of cancer. She wants to operate on him with a dangerous stem-cell procedure. This subplot does nothing for the movie except give Scully reasons to argue with Mulder and refuse to accompany him on his quest to find a missing FBI agent.

Just when Mulder and Scully thought they were out, the FBI pulls them back in. Sort of. Special Agent Xzibit (his character name is Drummy but I swear, each time he said his name, I heard "Special Agent Dummy") doesn't really seem to want either of them there, but Special Agent Amanda Peet is a fan of Mulder's work on the X-Files (hey, aren't we all) and wants his insight on their missing colleague. Peet calls herself "not the most-popular girl in Washington" (what professional woman would describe herself this way?) and introduces herself to Mulder with the greeting, "Fox Mulder, I believe?" Who the hell says that? Peet also has a penchant for flirting with Mulder during FBI raids on suspects. She's also Special Agent Dummy and deserves what happens to her (nothing good). 

The FBI has been working with a psychic priest, Father Billy Connelly, who may or may not be a fraud but is most certainly a pedophile. As Scully puts it, he's "buggered 37 young boys", and I hope none of them was named Dennis Blunden. Scully hates this priest. Fucking hates his guts. He must bring back terrible memories for Scully of when she was a red-haired little boy.

There is a lot of gabbin' about God in I Want To Believe; whether or not He would actually speak through a pedophile and whether that means He forgives our balls-tickling priest. It's an interesting idea but the movie tackles the issue mostly through Scully barging into the priest's apartment in the middle of the night and yelling at him. Scully eventually uses the priest's advice ("Don't Give Up" - did Father Sodomy get this from God or from a Peter Gabriel song?) to save Mulder's life in the end. Scully saving Mulder from the killer pays him back for saving her from the alien spaceship in Antarctica (in the previous and superior The X-Files: Fight the Future ten years ago), only Scully's rescue was far less interesting. She bonks the killer on the head with an axehandle and that was it. She didn't even quip, "Let me axe you something." 

Walter Skinner shows up in the last 15 minutes in an embarrassing walk-on where I'm pretty sure writer-director Chris Carter expected wild applause from the audience when they see his familar mug. Even the crickets were too bored to chirp. Skinner tells some bad jokes, points a gun at the evil Russian surgeons who offer no resistence, and then disappears back to Stargate Atlantis or where ever he hangs his hat these days.

Since there are no aliens or monsters of the traditional sort, I Want To Believe turns out to be Mulder and Scully versus the villains from Turistas. The mystery Mulder and Scully unravel (sort of, she really only helps tangentially, which is one of this movie's many, many problems) involves organ harvesting, kidnapped girls, severed heads, Russian homosexuals, Leoben from Battlestar Galactica, and dogs. (Batman would have warned Mulder to stay away from the attack dogs, but Mulder wouldn't have listened anyway.) I shit you not, all of the blood and gore in the movie is about a gay Russian who wants to be a female Russian. Apparently, when Father Billy Connelly raped him as a boy, it turned him gay and made him want to be a woman so he and his boyfriend Leoben began Frankenstein experiments, first on dogs. They harvest organs and bodyparts and then attempt to graft a whole new female body using mismatched parts from girls they kidnap who swim at the local public pool. No, seriously. It's over for The X-Files. It's so over.

The Dark Knight (****)

THE DARK KNIGHT

"You Either Die A Hero Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain."

The Dark Knight behaves as if it would be surprised to learn it's a comic book superhero movie. It expends a muscular two and a half hours vigorously arguing that it's an epic crime drama and haunting Shakespearean tragedy. The Dark Knight would convincingly win its argument, too, were it not for the guy dressed like a bat, the clown-faced killer, and the man missing half his face. Even then it cuts them all down to size, tears them inside out, and bares their souls for the world to see. The Dark Knight turns out to be a gripping four way dance: three men trying to preserve their city and one enigmatic chaos-bringer tearing apart all their efforts, and tragically later, their bond.

Escalation. This was the idea that ended Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight all but redefines the word. There is so much going on in The Dark Knight, so much happening, often all at once, it's almost staggering. The intricate details of Batman, Gordon and Dent's war on the mob, going after the mob's money laundering, indicting underbosses to turn state's evidence against the godfathers of the city, could be straight from The Wire. Batman outdoes Mission: Impossible III's Ethan Hunt in both coolness and jumping off of buildings when he makes a special and all-kinds-of-illegal side trip to Hong Kong to "extradite" (a better word is "kidnap") Zau, a potential Wayne Industries business partner who works as the Gotham mob's accountant. (Side note: one of the best things about Christopher Nolan's Batman films is that they are global in scope. His Batman and his Gotham City are palpably a part of our world, not existing in a sealed off, self-contained universe of soundstages and CGI cityscapes.) 

Meanwhile, the Joker robs a mob bank in a splendid homage to Heat, and then essentially hires himself as the mob's enforcer, giving himself the assignment of eliminating the Batman. In between, the Joker bumps off each mob boss (played by Eric Roberts and Michael Jai White) and takes over their operations to give Gotham City "a better class of criminal". Then the real shit hits the fan. 

City officials are assassinated. Jim Gordon becomes Comissioner. A pivotal handsome face is scarred irrevocably. And a major death, but not the one expected. Minor characters, like one of Gordon's cops or Bruce Wayne's accountant, end up making huge mistakes that cost our heroes gravely. Even Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman, bemused) and faithful Alfred (Michael Caine, rock solid) get important bits of business. Fox takes a moral stand against Bruce Wayne abusing his technologies while Alfred makes a difficult decision to burn Rachel Dawes' goodbye letter to Bruce and protect his employer from further heartache.

Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale, confident and firing at all cylinders) was the singular focus of Batman Begins, and the previous chapter did its job so well that Batman is able share a much grander canvas with Lieutenant James Gordon, District Attorney Harvey Dent, and the Joker without being upstaged and shoved to the background. Wayne's two lives have settled into a successful routine in the last year. He can sleep through his days as Chairman of Wayne Enterprises and flaunt his bevy of easy hotties (to Rachel Dawes' eye-rolling chagrin) thanks to Lucius Fox minding the store. Fox is also ever-upgrading Batman's suit and weapons in the best Q tradition. Meanwhile, Batman has become a mythic figure of inspiration to the people of Gotham. In some ways, the wrong kind of inspiration as bands of misguided caped crusaders dress like him and attempt to protect the city, causing far more trouble than they're worth.

A year after the "Narrows Attack" and demise of Ra's Al Ghul in the first film, Batman, Gordon and Dent have formed an effective team in bringing down the mobs that choke the life out of Gotham City. (It was a nice touch to open the picture with Batman apprehending Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, (Cillian Murphy, welcome back) tying up a loose end of Batman Begins.) The Joker reveals himself to be a dangerous wildcard, singlehandedly upending all of work being done to save Gotham. As tragedy compounds tragedy despite our heroes' best efforts, Wayne begins to ask the hard questions about what Batman is worth. I thought the pressures the Joker placed on Bruce Wayne midway in the movie where he decided to turn himself in as Batman were weak and insufficient. I didn't buy that part of the story. I was glad to see Rachel didn't either and she was more than a little disgusted at Bruce for allowing Harvey to take the fall for him. But everything worked out fine for them. Wait, no, it really, really didn't.

The strangest stuff was Batman's (off the record) friendly relationship with the Gotham Police. There were moments of Batman in his full regalia inside police headquarters that skate memories of Adam West and Burt Ward hanging out with Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara. The Police didn't seem to mind Batman parking his, presumably unlicensed, Batmobile and Bat-Pod in the police parking garage. Maybe the glove compartment of his now-destroyed Batmobile (which must put smiles on toy licensors' faces) was full of unpaid tickets. Despite all his wonderful toys, there were moments when Batman seemed strangely inadequate for his mission. So much action happens in broad daylight that Bruce Wayne was reduced to meddling in his "much more subtle" Lamhborgini once or twice. And old Batsuit or new, light is not Batman's friend. The more clearly we see the Batsuits, the more the illusion is lost by what eyesores they are.

There has never been a Joker to equal the vile, mesmerizing psychopath the late Heath Ledger created. Ledger's Joker is a creature of pure malevolence, bereft of moral or ethical limitations. Every second the Joker is on the screen, Ledger virtually has his hand clenched around each audience's member's throat, forcing us to pay attention to him. The first big shock of the movie was the "disappearing pen" trick the Joker pulled on a mobster, and we laughed not because it was funny, but because it was sadistic and horrible. It was fascinating gauging the reactions of people in the theater when the Joker was on the screen. I overheard a number of people, mostly girls, whisper "he's so scary." 

All of the Joker's murders, his forward-thinking schemes of escape and attacks, were brilliant, if highly improbable. I loved the Joker's stories about how he got his scars, one about his father told to a mob boss, and another about his wife told to Rachel Dawes. I don't believe a word of it, or anything that comes from that lunatic's mouth, personally. Nolan and Ledger gives us sides of the Joker we've never seen before, like when he's dressed as a nurse visiting Harvey Dent in the hospital, or sitting on the floor "helpless", baiting a stupid cop. I believe Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker is the new standard by which the character will now be defined and redefined, in the comics and elsewhere. 

The Dark Knight more than satisfies in Batman's interactions with the Joker. Their classic interplay was brought to life, fully developed, in just a few precious scenes. The Joker's conversations with Batman, challenging Batman's sense of morality, creating dilemmas and provoking his responses, were amazing, far richer and more intriguing than the "comic booky" dialogue route they could have tread. I loved how the Joker quickly deduced Batman's affections for Rachel from the way he "dove after her". (A great bit was Batman's "Let her go" and Joker's retort, "Poor choice of words." before throwing Rachel away like yesterday's garbage.) 

The scene where Batman locks the interrogation room from the inside because he wants to beat the Joker half to death to find out where Rachel and Dent are was electrifying. This is most terrifying Batman has ever been in a movie, but even at his most intimidating, the Joker just laughed Batman's physical threats off. The Joker knows Batman's limits all too well. I adored how Joker lied to Batman, sending him to Dent's location and not Rachel's. Finally, the Joker's scheme to force one ferry of passengers to choose to blow up the other failing was great, especially in how it was a victory for Gotham and the goodness of the people who live there, proving Batman's point over the Joker's. Considering Ledger cannot return for any sequels, it was more than a little surprising that his Joker didn't take the long drop into a dirt nap that Jack Nicholson's Joker did.

Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart, doing fine work), Gotham City's "White Knight", emerges as a bright, heroic hope-bringer, everything Batman can't be. So persuasive is Dent's crusading passion that Bruce Wayne's jealous asshole attempts to cock block him from their mutual love, Rachel Dawes, ends with him firmly on Dent's side. Bruce Wayne believes in Harvey Dent, and so do we. He was the best of them, as Batman says. I loved the way the movie showed violent little cracks in Dent's shimmering armor, like his tendancy to cheat chance with his lucky two-headed dollar coin, and when he kidnapped and went ballistic on one of the Joker's mental patient henchmen, foreshadowing the tragedy meant to befall him. The inventive way Nolan devised for Dent to lose half his face - to flames instead of acid - and become Harvey Two-Face, along with the runner of where the name came from, were light years better than the comic book's explanation of a mob boss throwing acid at Dent's face during a trial (as depicted hilariously in Batman Forever). It's tragic, operatic stuff and it works brilliantly. We truly feel for Dent, how he suffered, what he's lost. The special effects for the "scarred" side of Two-Face are grotesquely persuasive.

Perhaps even moreso than Batman, Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman, for my money the MVP) emerges as the true hero of Gotham City. Half of The Dark Knight is a cop procedural, with Gordon front and center, making the hard calls, facing down mobsters and madmen alike. The difficulties of Gordon's job leading the police in the most corrupt city in America, the frustations he faces, the dangers he and his family endure, the compromises he is forced to make, have never been clearer or more compelling. Gordon pulled off the most shocking moment in his film when he faked his death and apprehended the Joker. (Yes, there was a moment when I did actually think Nolan had busted the ballsiest move in Batman movie history and killed Gordon off.) The climactic events where Batman saved Gordon's son's life stamped the friendship and understanding the two men have. In certain ways, Gordon's job is more difficult than Batman's. Gordon shares the burden of protecting Gotham with Batman but has the added pressures of having to publicly justify and secretly protect Batman himself, especially going forward into future Batman movies.

Replacing Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes was a savvy casting decision. Her pretty pout and perpetual headlights aside, Holmes merely (or barely, or hardly, depending on who you ask) held her own in Batman Begins. Gyllenhaal, a superior actor, immediately made the pivotal Rachel character her own. She was convincing as an assistant D.A. convincing Zau to turn state's evidence. More importantly, Gyllenhaal made Rachel a woman worthy of both Bruce Wayne's and Harvey Dent's affections, so much so that her death was a heartbreaker (the audience would probably have applauded if it were Holmes who died). Although the single most unbelievable event in the entire movie is when Batman dove off Wayne Tower after the Joker defenestrated Rachel. They plummeted dozens of stories, crashed into a car, and were both completely unharmed. Sure.

The action in The Dark Knight is superior to Batman Begins', though some of Batman's fight scenes seemed awkward in how limited Bale and his stuntmen could move in the Batsuits, old or new. There's no shortage of car chases and explosions -- an exceptional one was the Joker comically exploding a hospital. Whereas the previous film presented Batman the way a horror movie would -- jump cuts of action from the shadows that were impossible to follow -- The Dark Knight shows Batman's full fighting capabilities, as well as how much he gets hurt. Attack dogs are not the Batman's best friend. Batman is properly injured, and quite a bit too, the most bizarre example being when he coudn't bring himself to run the Joker over with his Bat-Pod and ended up crashing into the overturned trailer truck, knocking himself out in the process. The last time Batman spent this much time on his back in a movie, Catwoman was straddling him and purring about mistletoe.

The presence of the Joker notwithstanding, humor is at a premium. There's nothing funny about living in Nolan's Gotham City, much less trying to protect it. Bruce Wayne's millionaire playboy facade of concurrently dating prima ballerinas and handfuls of supermodels seems to be as much about amusing himself and the audience as providing an alibi for how Wayne is above suspicion as Batman. Does Wayne sleep with any of these girls, though? Seems like there'd be gossip if he didn't. Maybe he pays them off to keep their mouths shut. Or maybe Alfred finishes what Wayne started.

The finale of the movie is devastating. Before The Dark Knight, the bleakest chapter in Batman's cinematic journey was Batman Returns. The concluding events of The Dark Knight eclipse Tim Burton's singular vision of emotionally cracked animal-people living in a freak show. At the end of Batman Returns, Batman is so very sad because he thinks his girlfriend is dead on Christmas. Well, come what may. The Dark Knight pushes the pathos far beyond. Rachel is dead, and thanks to Alfred, Wayne will never know she had moved on. Add Dent's descent to madness plus the end of Batman's detente with the local authorities and no movie Batman has ever lost more. 

In the end, Batman chooses to be an armor-clad Atlas, shouldering the hopes, guilt, and dark secrets of the entire city. Batman takes the blame for Harvey Dent's mistakes so he can die a hero, while Batman becomes a hunted vigilante once more. No movie Batman has ever willingly re-examined his purpose in Gotham like this. As Alfred sagely advised, Batman is the one who can make the hardest choices. Harvey Dent promised that "it's always darkest just before the dawn." I think this Batman, our best Batman, has come to understand that for him, no light of dawn will ever break his dark nights.

Batman: Gotham Knight

BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHT

 

July 15, 2008

I was under the impression that Batman: Gotham Knight "bridges the gap" between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but this DVD seems to me to be pretty non-essential viewing. You don't learn a whole lot besides some stuff about Boss Maroni and the Russians' mob war in Gotham, and the introduction of a minor cop character in Dark Knight. I tend to doubt Deadshot and Killer Croc will be referenced in The Dark Knight so I question whether these cartoons are even going to be canon. I'll guess we'll see on Friday.

The six main chapters were extremely underwhelming. Some of the animation was nice. Some. But six different anime styles created a very disjointed viewing experience. I thought the Killer Croc and Deadshot chapters were generally the most successful, but I didn't think the writing was so hot, despite the hype of David Goyer and other big name writers penning the chapters. The voice acting is in the DC cartoon style of the last 15 years; monotone voice over work that puts me right to sleep.

Overall though, compared to The Animatrix, which is the template Gotham Knight seems to want to follow, it's a failure. The Animatrix contained a riveting two parter explaining how the Machines gained control over the Earth and built the Matrix, and there was a very good, moody piece about how Neo freed The Kid's mind from the Matrix.

Gotham Knight sums up as six fairly interesting, somewhat weird, but ultimately unconvincing vignettes about Batman. It's set in the Batman Begins/Dark Knight universe but doesn't really represent it well at all, since Chistopher Nolan's Batman movie universe is about grounded, gritty realism, which Japanese anime is pretty much the exact opposite of.

Wanted (**1/2)

WANTED

June 27, 2008

"Shoot this motherfucker!"

Wanted wants to be a lot of things, mainly a cross between Fight Club's hard-wired social commentary and The Matrix's blistering action. Sitting in a theater with a bunch of 22 year olds and under, I reflected that when I was their age, I had the real Fight Club and The Matrix when those movies were brand-spanking new and mind-blowingly innovative. These kids get Wanted. My generation got the original deal while these kids get the hand-me-down knockoff. You were born ten years too late, children. You got screwed. 

Wanted is exactly the hyper, video-game, teenage boy tittilating, action picture it advertises itself to be, so on that level it works. I got a little tired of the movie's redundant one guy shooting a curved bullet and other guy shooting another curved bullet so the curved bullets collide in slow motion gimmick, but that's me. I'd say Wanted tried way too hard to be cool. If you wanna be cool, just be cool. Trying so hard just gets a little embarassing. 

James McAvoy plays Wesley Gibson, a sweaty, sniveling loser who complains endlessly in voice over about what a sweaty, sniveling loser he is. When he walks outside his shitty apartment, Nine Inch Nails' "Every Day is Exactly the Same" follows him around until he gets to his job as an office drone. And then when he leaves work, Nine Inch Nails' "Every Day is Exactly the Same" starts up again. At least Wesley Gibson's shitty life has a rockin' soundtrack. Wesley Gibson is also the son of the world's greatest assassin and genetically inherited the ability to shoot the wings off of flies with bullets that are bigger than the flies are.

One day, Wesley Gibson meets Angelina Jolie in a CVS. We should only be so lucky. Jolie saves him (or did she?) from an assassin trying to kill him and he gets to look up her skirt as she spreads across the hood of her car shooting at their attacker. We should only be so lucky.

From there, Wesley Gibson is indoctrinated into the Fraternity, a cabal of dude assassins, and Jolie, the one token girl who plays rough with the boys. The Fraternity get their marching orders from Morgan Freeman, who gets his marching orders from a loom. Wesley Gibson also gets to sit in some sort of all-healing milkbath every day. Once, he gets to watch Angelina's bony, inked up, but still hot bare ass prance around the Fraternity spa. We should only be so lucky.

I enjoyed Wesley Gibson's Fraternity initiation of getting his face caved in and his belly stabbed with knives repeatedly. I also enjoyed when Wesley grew a set and used a keyboard to bash in the face of his asshole "best friend" who's been fucking his girlfriend. (Somehow this asshole forgot all about it and hero worships Gibson even more when Gibson makes a surprise visit to his old apartment to collect his father's gun and show off making out with Jolie.) The biggest laugh in the movie is when Wesley puts a gun to Freeman's head and warns, "I have a gun, sir!"

Problem is, I hated Wesley Gibson. Really did not like that little turd one bit. I didn't mind the Fraternity, although Jolie was the only one who had a backstory and something resembling a personality, which mostly consisted of her not saying anything and punching Gibson when she got annoyed.

The big reveal of What's Really Going On leads full-onto Wesley Gibson's Plan of Retaliation That Makes No Sense. It involves Wesley strapping bombs to rats, driving them into the Fraternity fortress, and then running through the fortress screaming and shooting. Then he stops at the floor Morgan Freeman is on and screams for him to come out, only to be completely surrounded by the main guys in the Fraternity he didn't kill.

There's some sort of moral dilemma over what the Fraternity is up to, where Freeman has violated the code they live by, but it seemed to me he had a good reason for doing so. Jolie disagreed since she lived her entire life by the code. Nevertheless, when Freeman urged his cohorts to "Shoot this motherfucker!" I was in wholehearted agreement with the sentiment, mainly because I could do very well without sequel movies about Wesley fucking Gibson.

My suggestion for Wanted 2: Wesley Gibson meets the opposite of the Fraternity, the Sorority. A bunch of girl assassins with one token dude who kill via bakesales, bikini carwashes, and STDs.