WANTED FOUND WANTING

We've not long been back from a much-needed 3 day battery-charging trip to the seaside town of Skegness. Due no doubt to the downturn in our national economy, 'Skeggy' was nowhere near as busy as this time last year, and the piss-poor weather can also be taken into account for a glaring lack of trade. I reckon we were extremely lucky to get around 6 - 7 hours of sunshine during our short stay, with the rest of the time being a mix of rain and dull periods. It rained pretty much all of Wednesday evening, so we decided to go to the local cinema and catch WANTED.

Timur Bekmambetov's actioner pitches James McAvoy as a downtrodden accounts manager, who is given the chance to escape from his worthless existence when Angelina Jolie confronts him with surprising news concerning his long-lost father. It turns out that dad was one of the worlds greatest assassins, and it now falls to his son to join a shadowy group known as The Fraternity in order to help save the world and avenge his father's death. If the kind of visual pyrotechnics that 'graced' THE MATRIX float your boat, then WANTED may well satisfy for pretty much the duration of its 104 minute running time with a multitude of bullet ballets attempting to deflect any temporary restlessness caused by a script that requires the ultimate in suspension of disbelief. After the opening 30 minutes, I was ready to shout 'Uncle' after being subjected to the aforementioned barrage of not-so special effects, punctuated by lame dialogue, ludicrous training manoeuvres (been there before as well) and plot twists that aimed high and fell flat. The cast certainly seemed to be having fun (including, I hope, Thomas Kretschmann, who is frankly wasted here) and box office returns suggest this a nice, safe popcorn flick that will doubtless do more than decent business on DVD. At the end of the day, WANTED is nothing more than undemanding multiplex nonsense. Nothing wrong with that, but go in with higher expectations and you may well be exclaiming 'So what!' by the time the closing credits arrive.