WANTED: A review, with big spoilers

We saw "Wanted". At the end of the day, if your movie has Angelina Jolie, and she is virtually a superhero, chances are I'm going to enjoy myself regardless of anything else. And this was, indeed, the case. I thought the guy was good, but anytime Jolie was onscreen things picked up just a little bit. She is just awesome. Period.

But can I quibble? And I'm not even going to complain about the numerous plot holes, because, like, whatever.

I'm a person in the Kathy Griffin/South Park ideology, who thinks swearing equals funny. Indeed, one of the previews before the movie was that Will Ferrell step-brother movie, and they dropped the F-bomb about six times. I can't recall ever hearing swearing like that in a trailer before. Thus? Funny. But swearing in anger is something I still find kind of offensive. It is just so unnecessary, and totally takes me out of the moment. The first time Morgan Freeman dropped it, the audience laughed (like when Betty White did it in that flood movie. High! Larious!). But the second time? Awkward. Anyway, so all through the movie is this total over-the-top swearing that was clearly done on purpose, yet to little effect other than to make me roll my eyes a couple of times.

Ditto on the violence. Curving bullets? Cool. Blood exploding out of heads about 500 times? Dumb. Also, and I don't understand why I have to keep repeating this complaint because it seems so obvious to me, but movies should ALWAYS ALWAYS have poetic justice. If a bystander has to be killed, he had better kick a dog in the prior scene. It doesn't take that much effort to get a dog on the set. So what was up with that train wreck where they kill an entire trainload of people without a second thought? Not cool. Throw me a bone here, how about a banner on the train that says "Welcome terrorist trainees!" or "Welcome Hannity fans!", I'm not asking for much here. It would have been just as easy to have only the caboose fall off the cliff. Also, I hate knives, but that is a personal gripe and not a moral one.

Lastly. My oldest and biggest complaint. I HATE IT WHEN THE GOOD GUY TURNS OUT TO BE THE BAD GUY. For crying out loud! This is not an interesting twist! How many times do I have to say this before Hollywood stops recycling this totally lame cliche? Of course I figured it out (mostly) almost as soon as the train fight started, and the movie was pretty much downhill from that point.

On the plus side, it is pretty awesome that the entire movie rests on the premise that God is talking to them through a magic loom. I mean, c'mon. Who knew that for thousands of years God has been sending messages in fabric in binary code meant to be deciphered in English?

There was some great photography. The car crashing into the train? Sweet. Although, what was up with the Matrix-ishy skyscraper hopping in the beginning? It was cool, but how come we never really saw anything like that again? What a way to, uh, not deliver.

In the end our hero is alone and even more miserable than he was at the beginning of the movie. Weird. Walking out, I had gotten my Angelina fix so I was ok, but David was really ticked off by the whole movie. He really likes the Jolie too, but for him the movie had no redeeming value and was just dark and ugly. We were both laughing though, because, well, let's just say that this movie is LOUD. Bombs, guns, trains - the volume is cranked pretty much the whole way through. But in the back row of the theater was someone who snored through the entire movie. It seems an expensive way to take a nap, even if you do have sleep apnea snoring going on. It was kind of annoying, but luckily the movie drowned him out most of the time.

Anyway. I hope Angelina has her babies soon, because she needs to start filming something new for me.