"Wanted," director Timur Bekmambetov's ("Night Watch," "Day Watch") comic book adaptation, is a solid summer action flick. Over-the-top and deliberately cartoon-ish, the creative action sequences and general visual flair help the film distinguish itself from other CGI-film action extravaganzas, as does the generous helping of graphic violence and profanity, which many other summer blockbusters tend to shy away from. Add to that really good performances (in not so serious roles) from James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, and Morgan Freeman, and you get what pretty much amounts to an awesome video game in movie form... Somewhat forgettable, far from life-changing, but an absolute blast from start to finish.

Wesley Gibson (McAvoy) is a boring, unnoticed cubicle worker with a stress disorder, who discovers that his father (who left when Wesley was a mere seven days old) was an assassin for a secretive group known as 'The Fraternity,' and was recently murdered. The Fraternity, working under the front of a textile mill, is a group of assassins - among them Fox (Jolie) and the head of the group, Sloan (Freeman) - that has existed for thousands of years and who dispatch people that 'fate' has instructed them to kill. When Wesley discovers the truth about his father, Sloan and Fox take him under their wing, and train him to avenge his father's death, by assassinating Cross (Thomas Kretschmann), the man who murdered him.

My problem with Bekmambetov's earlier film, "Night Watch" was that it felt so over-stylized that it wound up lacking a distinct place of its own. The first act of "Wanted" suffers this same problem: too much emphasis on flashy editing, bizarre camera angles and sound distortion. But once Wesley decides to join "The Fraternity" the film seems to settle into a place all its own, and becomes, actually, a treat to watch for the most part.

The cinematography on the whole is really spectacular; there are a few really clever uses of shallow focus, and the camera is always moving. While I am getting increasingly tired with the over-use of CGI in action films, the effects in this film are generally really strong, and the film is clearly very aware of itself (it ends with a character blatantly breaking the fourth wall), so the effects often feel very tongue-in-cheek, which usually works in the film's favor.
The action sequences are also generally really good, and very creative. Watching one particular scene towards the end really reminded me of the way I felt viewing similar scenes from "The Matrix" and "Equilibrium" for the first time.

Overall, a really solid, but very over-the-top action film. The film doesn't take itself seriously, and if you don't either, you'll have a blast.