Wanted

James McAvoy's fop haired Wesley Gibson rots in his office stall, medicated into social compliance. His monstrous, braying boss snaps staplers in his face whilst his jock colleague routinely pops over to Wes' place to shag his girlfriend. Woe unt woe. Plucked out of this 20 something malaise by big-head waif Fox (Angelina Jolie), Wes is dropped head first into the machinations of a zealot kill cabal that turns to a giant loom for direction - shades of The Moirae from Greek myth if you're very fucking generous indeed. Turns out Wes' absent poppa was King Kill, and the crypto fascist weavers are counting on nature over nurture. This is Wanted.

Adapted from Mark Millar's nasty comic series of the same name, Wanted the Movie plays like the demented doodles of the office sociopath - dull, wage-slave life is jettisoned for incalculable riches, near invincibility, no consequences gunplay and Jolie kissing. Indoctrinated into the round table, world-running dickholes club, Wes drone is given self-actualising purpose by seeking non-descript bad-man destruction. "They're evil because we tell you!" Naturally Jolie has a sympathetic sob-story to gloss over this anonymous cruelty; and that's the problem.

Wanted isn't as mean as it purports to be. Unfortunately it doesn't want to alienate the morally redemptive tastes of Cinema Goer X, and thus constantly feels the need to whiten up the greys. Ho hum. Third act revelations notionally undermine some of the until-then cast iron kill direction, but that's lost in a blur of motion and mother fuckers. If you're trying to make a film about an amoral scumbag, you might as well go the whole hog. Instead Wanted gets lost in a backwater Joseph Campbell hero quest. At least Night Watch supremo Timur Bekmambetov is having fun. Wanted is chock-full of impossible shots of bullets hurtling through space and heads. A ratty, batty showdown at Fruit of the Loom aside, Wanted hits its action peak during a French Connection referencing car chase - Wes performing gymnastic car crashes to get his mark.