Word: wesley
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...takes a while for the Fraternity to transform Wesley from dweeb to demi-deity. For the first third of the movie, he clings to his wimpiness, threatening to break the All-time Whining record held by the Justin Long character in Live Free and Die Hard. Moviegoers may start to wonder if McAvoy has imported to Wanted the softness of his roles in the more elevated Brit films Atonement, The Last King of Scotland and Becoming Jane. But he eventually gets the hang of movie heroism. Like Tobey Maguire, plucked from indie films to play Spider-Man, McAvoy...
...story based on Mark Millar's 2003 miniseries for Top Cow comics, and adapted for the screen by Derek Haas, Michael Brandt and Chris Morgan, the white-collar drudge is Wesley Gibson (Scots actor James McAvoy), whose life is a conspiracy of indignities. In a job where he's badgered by his fat-cow boss, he reads a dense computer page and his brain isolates the words "why? "are? "you? "here?". His girlfriend is having sex with his best friend, and Wesley pays for the condoms his friend will use to betray him. Even his ATM sasses him. "Insufficient funds...
...line at a store, a stunning woman - the Angelina Jolie-like Fox (Angelina Jolie) - whispers: "Your father was one of the greatest assassins who ever lived. The man who killed him is over there." Over there is Cross (Thomas Kretchmann), triggering much gunplay. BANG! Fox drags the terrified Wesley into a sports car and takes him on a chase through Chicago traffic that climaxes with her avoiding the pursuing killer by somersaulting her car sideways over other vehicles. It's a talent Wesley will acquire when he's assigned to shoot a businessman in a limo with bullet-proof windows...
...Wesley has been recruited into the Fraternity, which its leader Sloan (Morgan Freeman, in another of his God roles) explains is a thousand-year-old sect of killers whose sacred mission is to end the lives of evil people before they can commit their worst crimes: "You kill one, maybe save a thousand." (It's a little like the Pre-Crime Unit in Minority Report.) The team includes a specialist in gun lore (Common) and a fat man (Konstantin Khabensky) who's sharp with knives. But Fox is the star, and in poor, confused Wesley, Sloan believes...
...middle of one impossible assignment, Wesley asks Fox, "Have you ever thought of being somebody else - somebody normal?" She ponders for a beat and replies, "No." The same question, and answer, might apply to Jolie. The contours of her face and body are improbable, arresting and unique; she's simply not designed to play ordinary people. We don't doubt her skills as a serious actress, but she's much more seductive and satisfying as a fantasy or cartoon character. Or a saint from some fertility cult: Holy Jolie...