2008: Wanted

Wanted (Bekmambetov, 2008) 7/10

Corporate drone Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is tired and unwell. Life has left him jaded and stressed. Chained to a safety-net of anti-anxiety prescription pills and lacking in self-confidence, Wesley is unable to cope with the stresses and disappointments of his intangible accounting position at a Chicago financial company.

Enveloped in the myriad of failures within his life, Wesley is unable to defend himself from neither the criticisms of his overweight boss, his nagging girlfriend, nor the latter's utilization of an IKEA table as a prop for sexual encounters with his supposed best friend and co-worker Barry (Chris Pratt). His tattered, dog-eared self-help paperback offers little aid or comfort either. With his frequent apologies, Wesley is Back To The Future's Marty McFly sans the social awkwardness.

Queueing up for his latest prescription refill in a local supermarket, Wesley encounters a mysterious woman named Fox (Angelina Jolie). Fox tells Wesley that his father, a former assassin was recently murdered by a man named Cross (Thomas Kretschmann), the latter who just happens to be aiming another barrage of bullets at the pair. After fleeing through downtown Chicago, Wesley is introduced to other members of a clandestine group named The Fraternity.

Heading this organization is a man named Sloan (Morgan Freeman), the owner of a large textile plant. Sloan informs Wesley that not only was his father a member of this ancient society, but that it is Wesley's destiny to enlist in The Fraternity; thus providing meaning to Wesley's blank and unimportant life.Through a series of training sessions involving torturous beatings and unorthodox weapons instruction, the covert faction attempt to utilize Wesley's panic attacks to his advantage and hone their raw pupil into an assassin capable of defeating his father's killer.

With its simplistic plot about a disaffected corporate minion and over-the-top violence, Wanted has been compared to films such as Fight Club and The Matrix. Yet, unlike either of those films Wanted lacks structural inventiveness or philosophical inquisitiveness. In fact, it even lacks a plausible narrative. Built upon a flimsy mythology centered around the works and folklore of a latent group with its origins in pre-modern Moravian textile weaving, Wanted is seemingly ridiculous at face-value, particularly in regard to the film's prophetic loom machine.

However, the driving force of Wanted is not to be found in its story, but rather in its high-octane imagery drenched in adrenalin. This is an action picture which delivers all it promises in terms of pace and delivery. While Wanted lacks the substance of The Bourne Series or Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, it certainly offers greater thrills and excitement than other recent and feted Hollywood action films such as Doug Liman's stale Mr and Mrs. Smith or the cache of recent Marvel comic adaptations.

Preferring a pulse to a social conscience, Wanted is certainly thematically questionable in its ideas of control and experiential fulfillment through violence. Lacking any real sense of identity, Wesley finds opportunity and self-gratification through his work with The Fraternity. Additionally, in discovering his father's hidden past, Wesley achieves a measure of control of his previously unsatisfying regimented life. Dominion through chaos and destruction thus becomes the order of the day, as Wesley achieves the power and respect his ordinary day job fails to offer.

Yet, Wesley is no Walter Mitty or Billy Liar. His revenge fantasies are fulfilled through the hypnotic surreal world he enters, which gives him a sense of belief previously absent in his soul. Played with sarcasm and anxiousness by James McAvoy, the young Scottish actor brilliantly manages to breathe a sense of realism and humour into his character's beleaguered and jittery Everyman. McAvoy is also aided by a stately calm effort by Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie's ability to morph into a hyper-sexualized video-game vixen with miniscule effort.

However, the real star of the proceedings is Bekmambetov. The director's telescopic, hyper-kinetic approach results in a universe of surreal absurdities that never unravel in large part due to Bekmambetov's ability to convince his audience of the plausible nature of this action-packed nonsense in which assassins work from elevated trains, fall down canyon shafts relatively unscathed and drive decaying Eastern European compact cars onto speeding passenger trains. In Wanted, logic is not only suspended, but has also been successfully eradicated at the hands of an overtly visual pyromaniac.

Wanted is a fast-paced, stylish, jarring, teenage joyride of a film: an emotionally stunted picture lacking in sensitivity, maturity or a basic adherence to the laws of physics. The absence of the latter however is not a major loss, as Russian director Timur Bekmambetov places style over substance to create a CGI-intensive, ultra-violent action flick that spares few victims along the way. Wanted may not have a complex intellect, an original story line or anything beyond a fleeting buzz, but it has an abundance of sexy thrills, stunts and visual gimmicks to render the film surprisingly enjoyable and visually satisfying.

* Wanted is released by Universal

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque

1995: Clockers

Clockers (Spike Lee, 1995) 8/10

You are selling your own people death." (Iris Jeeter)

Perched upon a series of benches inside Brooklyn's Nelson Mandela Houses, a group of young African-American men jovially extol and critique the virtues of their favourite hip-hop stars amongst one another. After a few minutes, the banter soon reaches a juncture, as the principal reality of their gathering comes to the forefront.

This is no mere afternoon cultural conversation, but rather a brief pause in the daily activities of a brand of low-end drug dealers known as "clockers." Within a matter of seconds, the return to illicit business practices and an ensuing police raid offers a dark contrast to the previously warm and jocular exchanges. Beginning with its gruesome opening shots of real-life photographic evidence of murdered African-American victims of crime, Spike Lee's Clockers is a film dedicated to investigating the degeneration of the inner-city projects, whilst offering didactic solutions and alternative images.

Filmed in the format of a classic "police procedural," Lee's film centers on the character of Rodney aka "Strike" (Mekhi Phifer). With his fondness for electric trains and chocolate milk and his obtrusive chronic stomach ailments, "Strike" does not fit the stereotypical depiction of an urban hoodlum. Rather than being cold and calculated, he is jittery and lonely. Living in a spacious apartment outside of the projects filled with a massive model train collection, "Strike" has managed to present an image to his landlord of a clean-cut citizen untainted by the world of narcotics and criminal activity.

But in his relationship with Rodney, a local drug kingpin (Delroy Lindo), "Strike"'s links to the projects are rehabilitated. Isolated from his family both emotionally and physically, "Strike"'s relationship to the projects is strictly vocational, as it serves as a base for his operations as a "clocker." Desperate to impress his mentor, "Strike" agrees to kill a rival named Darryl outside a local fast food restaurant. Before completing the deed, "Strike" meets his estranged, respectable brother Victor (Isaiah Washington) at a bar. In contrast to "Strike," Victor has eschewed drug dealing, in favour of working two menial jobs in order to offer his children a positive counter-identity and to eventually relocate his family outside of the projects.

Arriving upon the scene of Darryl's death, local homicide investigators Rocco (Harvey Keitel) and Larry (John Turturro) begin to scour the projects for his assassin. Yet, they are surprised when the upstanding Victor turns himself into the police claiming he shot Darryl in self-defence. Unconvinced by Victor's "confession," the police begin to believe his younger brother "Strike" is Darryl's real murderer and thus begin to gather clues to support the overwhelming evidence that appears to link "Strike" to the crime. By removing footage detailing Darryl's murder, Lee's film not only adds a degree of mystery into the proceedings, but also expands on the film's layered investigation of the theme of perception.

In Clockers numerous stereotypical representations are shifted, whilst others are critiqued through Lee's keen social lens. Based on their personalities, not only does "Strike" appear an unlikely dealer, but his brother seems to be an improbable killer due to their respective interests and tendencies. Whilst profiling their background, Keitel's Rocco in particular has difficulty moving beyond the possibility that Victor could commit a crime, in contrast to his brother who fits the description through his criminal activities and relationships. Yet, in demonstrating these options, Spike Lee smartly attempts to break away from traditional representations by emphasizing the complexities and nuances of the urban African-American experience, whilst continually stressing the poisonous effects of narcotics and crime in African-American communities.

For example, in the character of Errol (Thomas Jefferson Byrd), Lee offers an astute, untraditional representation of a drug-addled criminal. Born to a preacher and training to be an accountant, Lee posits Errol as a tragic example of those individuals who abandoned a life of principles and virtues through drug addiction or a lust for the glamour associated with "gangster" lifestyles propagated through cultural vehicles such as film and music. In characters such as Victor, a neighbourhood doting named mother Iris (Regina Taylor) and local police officer Andre (Keith David), Lee offers positive "other" figures in the projects; counter-identities who have rejected the lust of money and power associated with drug dealing in favour of being hard-working, beneficial members of society, who yearn to change their communities from within.

Iris in particular becomes an important figure in the film through her son Tyrone (Peewee Love). Attracted by the temptation of money and power, Tyrone is continually found on the periphery of where the "clockers" reside, much to the distain of his mother Iris. Whilst Iris wants her intelligent son to become educated, he like many others, is offered a glamorous lifestyle addressed in a seductive language by neighbourhood kingpin Rodney and "Strike."

Centering his operations outside his legitimate hardware store, Rodney recruits children through promises of money and gifts. "Strike" continues this tradition by purchasing violent video games and brand-name clothing for Tyrone, who begins to mimic his mode of speech, dress and interests. Iris' admonishment of this culture and refusal to accept her son's eventual succumbing to these influences resonates in some of the film's most powerful moments.

Although the film's white detectives Rocco and Larry repeatedly attempt to inject a sense of guilt into "Strike" and Rodney, it is the loud-voiced condemnation of this cycle of violence and death by African-American protagonists such as Iris and Andre, which carry much of the director's own emotional weight. Lee's film thus emerges as a rallying cry for urban African-Americans to extricate "black-on-black" violence through drug-dealing, murder and criminal activity from their communities and in turn create proud neighbourhoods built on interconnectedness, education and a spirit of collective collaboration.

In doing so, Clockers emerges as a gritty portrayal of urban African-American life and an anti-Blaxploitation film. In Clockers the "ghetto" experience is deconstructed into a world filled with both positive and negative archetypes; demonstrating both an environment bedeviled by poverty and other socio-economic ills, but teeming with possibilities for a brighter future helmed by leaders and mentors who are unwilling to accept defeat, stereotypes or excuses.

* Clockers is available on DVD through Universal Home Video

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque