Wanted. “You apologize too much.” “I’m sorry?” 4.0 out of 5.0.

Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is anything but typical. He leads a dull, meaningless white-collar life as a low-level office accountant, working eight hours a day as serves as a whipping boy for his superior, an obnoxious, overweight, sympathy-hungry sow, and constantly over-medicating himself with anxiety suppressant pills and regular meals consisting of Mars bars, Fritos and Red Bull. His demanding girlfriend, who appears to be stuck in a permanent state of premenstrual syndrome, is having a not-so-discreet fling with Wesley’s boneheaded best friend and co-worker, who seems oblivious to the emotional harm he might be causing his friend, of which Wesley is fairly deserving, considering his role in all of his interpersonal relationships consists of sitting back, shutting up and filing through paperwork, be it for a new apartment or a standard Office Space brand TPS report. How could this spineless shell of a man by the name of Wesley Gibson be anything but typical, you ask? How can he possibly amount to anything more than a fly on the wall in the lives of the people around him, something more significant than a pathetic, parasitic peon working for pocket change from the fattened wallets of his corporate superiors, eating non-food to keep himself alive as he slowly becomes mentally deranged to the ear-splitting rhythm of the passing el-train? Well, he could be the offspring and heir of the single greatest assassin in the history of western civilization.

Wanted is what at first glance appears to be your typical midsummer action movie with all the standard trimmings; extended car chases with beautiful cars, extended fighting sequences with beautiful women, extended action scenes with beautiful special effects; it’s all here. I’ll even admit that my attempt at a buildup for the film’s plot didn’t do much to enhance the premise; it’s a fairly weak and clichéd one which we’ve seen, oh, about a dozen times in the form of numerous superhero and shoot-‘em-up films. So what makes Wanted different from the rest? What can make this film, loosely based on the Marvel comic book by Mark Millar, so unique and so worthy of a majority percentage of my oh-so-prestigious numerical ratings system? Is there anything in this film that is going to inspire me to write a review that is more than just a copy-and-paste version of every other Jason Statham movie that has been released since Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)? Well, as it turns out, there is something unique to Wanted, and though I had to step back for a moment to find it, I was glad that I did.

Wanted is directed by Timur Bekmambetov, a Russian-Kazakh filmmaker best known for Night Watch (2004), a vampire-horror film which is phenomenally popular in the former Soviet Union and, well, not quite as popular here across the Atlantic, but is still worth checking out if you have the time. The film follows the aforementioned Wesley Gibson as he is trained to become a killing machine and join the ranks of the Fraternity (whose pledge, I was hoping, was to begin with “I, state your name...”), a thousand-year-old league of assassins whose purpose is to rid the world of all those who corrupt it; corporate leaders, guerilla fighters, the loom names it, they’ll kill them (you’ll understand that part later; or maybe not, it’s kind of an awkward plot device). This underground organization of righteous killers is led by Sloan (Morgan Freeman) with his right-hand man, err, woman, Fox (Angelina Jolie, and indeed she is one), and the two of them seek to replace their deceased colleague with his spawn. I’m not going to tiptoe around it any longer; James McAvoy’s character tries, fails, tries again, succeeds, and proceeds to open a jar of video-game-style pwnage on every target he gets in his sights. Yes, I just used pwnage in a sentence as a legitimate word.

Wanted sets itself apart from other action films by taking an approach to its action as something that should not be clogged with pretentious plotting and elaborate flashback sequences that would under normal circumstances be included in this type of Michael Bay fodder film. Instead, it meets the unavoidable amount of pretentiousness requirement early and quickly, and proceeds onward with the action sequences, only stopping occasionally to let us breathe for a moment and set us up for more pwnage (God, I love saying that). The action scenes are truly unique and inventive; while they sometimes borrow and owe a bit to films like The Matrix (1999), they are presented with visuals and slow-motion/rewind techniques that make the film feel like an X-Box game (hence the use of the word “pwnage” in my review). However, while the film has video-game sequences, it doesn’t feel like other movies that resemble video games in the sense that other movies that seem like games feel like the filmmakers are playing, while Wanted feels like the audience is playing. This is mainly due to James McAvoy’s excellent performance (in the sense that he accomplishes something beyond what other actors in similar roles have done), whose giddy enthusiasm in the midst of his elaborate executions gives us the sense that he’s just an average Joe with a license to pwn (more pwnage); we have fun with him, not watching him. Also, the film’s script is slightly better than your typical action fare; while the plotting is atrociously cliché and we aren’t given any twists that weren’t fairly obvious from the beginning (see the film’s late-second-act turning point as an example of your standard reversal plot twist), the dialogue and set-ups are pretty decent; Wesley’s dry remarks about how much his life sucks are fairly funny, and some of the simplest lines are the most memorable (see the sequence when James McAvoy launches his car using another as a ramp, shooting an assignment through a limo’s sunroof in slow-motion while gleefully laughing “I’m sorry.” Oh, sweet pwnage!).

There’s nothing more to Wanted than it’s violence and visual sequences. If you’re looking over the show times on the scrolling marquee at the Cineplex for something existential and scholastically and thematically gratifying, well, you should probably be doing your summer reading or looking up Paul Thomas Anderson’s greatest hits collection. I knew from the beginning that there wasn’t going to be anything but stale air beyond the deliciously crunchy outside of Wanted, and understanding that I took a step back and just watched the film for what it is; a series of still photographs running in front of a camera at about 100 feet per second in front of a blinking light projecting a moving image of Angelina Jolie leaning out of the window of an Italian sports car firing a shotgun at a PetCo truck, which in itself is so dumb that it becomes brilliant. For all of its stupidity in the field of storytelling, Wanted redeems itself by giving you what you really came for. If you’re going to the movies in the summer looking for an adrenaline-inducing action movie like any normal person would, check out Wanted. It’s worth a run. Pwnage. Gotcha. Rated R.