Why Wanted is the Best Action Movie Ever

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a big fan of action movies. I don’t think they’re inherently bad or anything. It’s just like with romcoms : the genre is so well-defined that after watching one, you’ve watched them all. The beats never change, even if the flavor is a bit different. If I'm honest, action movies tend to be so predictable that flavor is the only part of the film that can actually catch my interest.

Which is why I love Wanted.

My initial interest in Wanted stemmed from an adolescent obsession with James McAvoy who plays the main character, Wesley. I soon discovered, though, that I was going to get far more than I bargained for as the movie took an… interesting turn. How do I put this? It’s camp. Like drag queen levels of camp. In an action movie.

I’ve explained camp before, but it’s worth explaining again for any new readers - if you’re already familiar with camp, feel free to skip this paragraph. The best way to describe something that’s camp is “earnestly ridiculous and/or over-the-top”. This can be intentional, like in the case of films like Clue, Rocky Horror Picture Show, or even Mamma Mia. All of these films are silly and stupid and they don’t just know it, they REVEL in it. The purest camp films don’t know they’re camp, though. Their earnestness isn’t a commitment to silliness, it’s a commitment to seriousness that seems to be blind to how utterly stupid everything is. This kind of camp includes films like The Room, where you can’t help but feel a weird mix of pity and admiration for the creator’s utter devotion to an idea they don’t realise is just awful.

Wanted is the latter kind of camp, and it’s beautiful.

I’m going to spoil the first 25 or so minutes of the film because there’s no other way to explain it. Imagine a film starting with a sassy voiceover by the main character about what a loser he is (camp), only for it to be suddenly interrupted by a side character having a crazy shootout that seems to involve superhero-level killing abilities and a mysterious ancient order of assassins (camp). Switching back to the protagonist, an ATM reminds him what a loser he is (camp) and he goes about his day only for Angelina-freaking-Jolie to show up, tell him he’s the son of a world-class assassin, and start ANOTHER shootout! CAMP.

James McAvoy is then... Scooped up is the best way to describe it I guess, by a car mid-drift. At first he’s reasonably terrified, before getting snarky and even realising he’s kinda having fun? He then proceeds to get a view up Jolie’s skirt (gross but camp) and even apologise to some cops in slow-mo while bullets curve in physics-defying arcs.

That’s just the first 25 minutes. SO. CAMP.

I won’t spoil anything else, because it’s a movie you have to experience, but let’s just say there are some weird special effects, Morgan Freeman shows up, and there’s even this scene :

Wanted is camp because it includes every trope and every fantasy every action movie ever wished it had. While it highlights the funny logical implications (let’s just say Wesley has a less-than-fun time during his obligatory assassin-training-sequence), it does so out of pure love for the genre. The movie knows it’s being funny, but it’s being earnestly and genre-appropriately funny. If anything, Wanted shines because it doesn’t have any flavour at all. It doesn’t pretend to have core values like Fast & Furious or Taken. The film isn’t trying to be an action romance or an action horror or even an action comedy - any humour comes naturally from action films’ inherent tropes.

Really, Wanted is special because it takes the action genre to it's logical extremes. In a way, it's pure action.

Weirdly, then, I guess it could be said that I actually DO like action movies, so long as they drop all the pretense about having any deep meaning or clever mystery. If I’m going to watch a movie about people punching and shooting each other, I might as well go all in. Wanted is an action film made out of unashamed adoration for the genre, nonsensical though it may be. That’s why it’s the best action film ever.