Dir.
Timur Bekmambetov, US. 2008, 110 mins
Cast: James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie
Review by Carol Allen
Bekmambetov, who directed
the hit Russian vampire movies "Day
Watch" and "Night
Watch",
earns his American stripes in this big budget, high octane
action story, based on yet another comic book. Wesley (McAvoy)
is a bit of a nerd, an office worker drone, bored out of
his skull, prone to anxiety attacks, bullied by his doughnut
gobbling boss Janice (Lorna Scott) and cuckolded by his girlfriend
(Kristen Hager). He's the sort of guy who feeds his own name
into a Google search and nothing comes up. Until the day
he is drawn into a shoot out between the beautiful, super
cool Fox (Jolie) and Cross (Thomas Kretschmann), who, she
tells him, killed Wesley's estranged father and is out to
kill him, because he like dad has the super gene, which makes
him a member of the Fraternity. The Fraternity is a centuries
old league of super assassins, whose mission is to kill those,
who are predicted by fate to disturb the balance of world
and cause harm. In the context of the real world, they haven't
so far done a great job, but this is of course fiction.
McAvoy seems at first thought an unlikely choice for the
hero. He is very good in the first part as the nervy and
pathetic Wesley, whose world sometimes takes on the appearance
of a Kafkaesque nightmare. But he also adapts impressively
to Wesley the super sharp shooting killer for the greater
good. Jolie, lavishly tattooed and beautiful as ever, is
both athletic and cold as ice as his chief mentor and Freeman
as Sloan, leader of the fraternity, brings with him the convincing
authority that comes from having played both God and the
President of the US. The film is loaded with inventive action
sequences, such as a couple of car chases which push the
boundaries of credibility but still make you gasp and a nail
biting train crash sequence.
The premise of the film is however
disturbing in its amorality. The explanation of the loom
of fate, which invests the Fraternity with their life and
death power over others, is a questionable concept - like
who do you think you are, you guys? Wes's training programme,
which involves him being beaten up and tortured by fellow
frat members the Repairman (Marc Warren) and the Butcher
(Dato Bakhtadze) is unpleasantly sadistic and the collateral
damage created in the course of the Fraternity's assassination
work shows a casual lack of care towards the people they
are supposed to be saving from evil doers. Wes's initiation
into the brotherhood requires him to prove his inherited
talent by shooting the wings off flies ("as
flies to wanton boys are we to the gods") and later
on he employs a trick to eliminate his enemies, which involves
rats rigged up to explode. I hope somewhere in the credits
there's an assurance that no flies and rats were harmed in
the making of this movie!
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