Word: bekmambetov
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...Acker made a short film called 9 when he was in graduate school. Nominated for an Academy Award in 2006, it brought Acker admirers and eager mentors, including Tim Burton and Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov, two of the producers of the feature-length version. They saw something special in that short film, and Acker was encouraged to expand on it. The results are still on the skimpy side - the film is only 79 min. - and while reminiscent of Coraline's playful weirdness and Wall-E's plotline, lack the power of either. The script by Pamela Pettler, who also worked...
...confrontation" - the burly new fantasy Wanted reveals the magic that can blossom when you put a gun in the hand of a meek wage slave and tell him he was born to be a righteous killer. Directed at a pitch of gritty giddiness by the Kazakhstan-born Timur Bekmambetov, who did the DVD faves Night Watch and Day Watch, this hard-R splatter-fest about a team of sanctified assassins is also the summer's zazziest action movie...
...Moreover, all the mayhem fits into Bekmambetov's visual strategy. As he demonstrated in the Night Watch-Day Watch series (which also concerns a team of superior beings battling in a grungy modern city), he's masterly at creating a dense world where soaring fantasy collides with mangy realism. He takes the try-anything brio of classic Hong Kong action filmmaking - slo-mo, speedy-mo, disorienting overhead shots, the whole lexicon of cinematic hyperventilation - and adds his own precision and an acrid, puckish sense of humor...
...Here he's working with a heftier ($65 million) budget and shooting mostly in the Czech Republic under Hollywood supervision, but the movie is pure Bekmambetov, as odd and beguiling as his home-grown stuff. He still has the ability to bring wit to the most sadistic scenes, in a way that leavens the violence, lets aggression approach artistry. You see it in a brief scene where Wesley finally takes revenge on his cheating friend and whacks him with a computer keyboard. The letters come loose and, tumbling slowly in air, form the letters F-*-*-* Y-O-U - except that...
...Wanted doesn't care. While it's manufactured for the young male demographic, it's aimed, like a Saturday Night Special ready to go BANG!, at the Hollywood establishment. The director is saying there are other, more daring ways to feed meat to the fanboys. The film is Bekmambetov's challenge to the more traditional members of the action-film fraternity. The final words of Wanted might be his: "What the f--- have you done lately...