I WANTED a Little More Logic

MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS!!!!

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I was really looking forward to WANTED.  I read the comics and loved them, and I read the first draft of the script Brandt & Haas did and was impressed with the way they toned the extreme violence and mayhem down into something a bit more commercial.

I was also jazzed that Timbur Bekmembatov (sp?) was directing.  I saw DAYWATCH ages ago, and was blown away by his visual style.  I couldn't wait to see what he'd do with a more linear (i.e. logical) story to anchor his amazing eye candy.

WANTED's got a decent main character and a good arc for him -- zero to hero -- even if the voiceover and coming-into-one's-own by way way of violence totally steals from FIGHT CLUB. However, the script/final film sags in three key areas.

One, pacing.  The middle of the movie drags -- between when Wesley finds out his destiny and starts training until the big conspiracy reveals himself.  I realize they need to service his whole training regimen, but this could have been helped with a little more conflict -- some additional missions for him, more reservations about who he's killing, etc.  The movie basically delivers a 45-minute montage with little tension other than when will Wesley stop getting the crap kicked out of him.

Two, the whole device of the Loom of Destiny(TM).  Basically, we're shown a loom that's supposed to randomly determine who needs to be killed to maintain balance in the universe.  This fails for a couple of reasons.  First -- that's moronic.  How would a magical loom that spells out binary code come to exist and get the power and ability to figure out who needs to be killed?  How would weavers figure out what it meant and crack the binary code (presumably a thousand years ago, there weren't many people familiar with computer languages)? Now granted, there's no logical way this could happen, but there are a few more plausible alternatives -- a specially-bred psychic or seer who figures out who needs to die, a computer program that prints out the results in plain English, etc.  Either of those off-the-top-of-my-head suggestions would work better.  Second -- the loom spits out coded messages that aren't visible to the naked eye.  They need to be interpreted.  So we have a bunch of sequences that are Morgan Freeman telling people -- oh, here's a sheet of paper with a fabric swatch, go kill this guy.  And then our hero saying -- no, Morgan Freeman had a swatch, he was supposed to die.  And Freeman retaliating with swatches of Angelina Jolie and all the other characters.  To the audience, these are sheets of paper with fabric swatches -- they mean nothing.  If you're going to stick with a Loom of Destiny(TM), at least have the loom weave in a name in the fabric or something else the audience can see.

The third is just a logic point, but a pretty large one.  If Wesley's father wanted to save him from joining The Fraternity, and he was camped out in the apartment next door, why didn't he take one of the thousand opportunities to grab Wesley BEFORE any of the havoc happened?  Or when Wesley was on his way to work after meeting Angelina Jolie for the first time?  The only reason this didn't happen on any of those occasions is that the movie would totally break; and that's not good writing to just gloss over that.  Figure it out -- give us a line of dialogue between Wesley and Terrence Stamp where Wesley asks if dad was next door all this time, why didn't he call him or stop by?  And Terrence Stamp tells him that dad knew he was being watched by The Fraternity.

Oh, and did they really need to blow up nine hundred thousand rats?  What'd the rats ever do to anybody?