This movie rest itself heavily on Angelina Jolie’s lips. Well, Angelina Jolie herself rest heavily on her lips. Being an, er, aficionados of Jolie –the whole package, mind you– I don’t mind. I understand.

I understand why the cameras in Wanted wanted to make love to her presence every time they had a chance. I understand why the whole movie wanted to immersed itself in the moment when Jolie gave McAvoy a wet one. I even understand why Jolie’s character must do what she did in the end of this movie: the movie wanted to immortalize her, much like the way of Marilyn Monroe was immortalize –albeit with considerably more spectacular bang.

What I don’t understand is this: why screw a good screw? The publications and credit titles said that this movie based on a comic book miniseries with the same name, created by Mark Millar (writer) and JG Jones (artist). Well, to me, it’s not –except for very few elements, like names, the early plot, and its archetypal bastard-hero: the loser who became an ultimate s.o.b. Oh, and the shooting of the wings of the flies too.

Wanted the comics is about a world where superheroes were defeated by, you could say, the united nations of super villains. At one moment, where it showed a drooling and senile someone who looked just like that iconic Superman, this comic feels perversely nostalgic about those days when bright colored costumed hero felt so right. But it’s a Millarworld, where even stories as sacred as The Second Coming of Jesus Christ and our cherished fables fantasy of Disney-like funny comics were defiled.

So, the main character in the comics, Wesley Gibson, is living a shitty life in the bottom of post-industrial society, and wham, the secret society of super villains recruits him. Why him? Because, lo, he is the son of the greatest assassin in the world (modeled, believe it or not, after Spiderman) who was murdered after enjoying a night with two male prostitutes. The big man said, “I just like to do this gay thing every other year to whet my appetite for the pleasure of the fairer sex.” I’m not condoning pornographic text. I’m just trying to draw you a picture here.

Wanted the comics have no positive moral whatsoever. Excessive violence, excessive sex, mindless anarchism, is the only true god in this universe. Asked how is his feeling after his first kill, Wesley answered, “Like I just f***ed Marilyn Monroe without a condom.” He then started out his new career as an assassin with shooting random people in the street. His code of honor? To say “f***k you” to everything that hinted a sense of values. I don’t like the comics very much, but I granted the comics had given me a good and fun catharsis.

Wanted the movie wants to make some moral ground. “Kill one and, maybe, we save thousands,” said Jolie/Fox. I nearly laugh hard if it wasn’t for Jolie irresistible lips. It’s a very shaky ground. But director Timur Bekmambetov got to do his thing: the shooters who –borrowing a critic’s phrase– “couldn’t shoot straight …on purpose”; sharp shooting from a moving train; sharp shooting from an insanely flying car; rewinds of miles away a traveling bullet trough, among other things, a doughnut. The bullet rewinds is a strong challenge in coolness competition to “bullet times” innovation from Wachowsky brothers (who bombed in this summer’s Speed Racer) for summer-action movies aesthetic.

Timur is a creature of post-Matrix Hollywood. He shook Russian movie industry with his relatively low-budget but ultra-cool flicks: Night Watch and Day Watch. With these manically epic-fantasy, Timur was showing his skill in visual acrobats that defying laws of physics. In Timur’s world, gone is the sacred social-realism that was such an inspiration for Sjumandjaja (Si Mamad, Kerikil-kerikil Tajam), replaced by the hyper-fantastic escapism with its vampires and “chalk of destiny” (literally, in the movies, the chalk is defining or manipulating destiny –good bye Potemkin!).

So of course, Timur feels right at home in the world of Wesley Gibson with its “fraternity of assassins” brouhaha. A note about James McAvoy, who previously seduced us in Atonement and played Wesley Gibson with fury. In Atonement, McAvoy showed us a study of restraint. In Wanted, he showed us a study of a transformation from a perennial loser into a fully explosive and no-hold-barred guy. He was the only one in this movie that actually did all the hard work.

Well, there was also Konstantin Khabensky. Konstantin was Timur’s main star in Night Watch and Day Watch, and here he played The Exterminator skillfully. But his part was so short. (I couldn’t help sighing and thought about Donnie Yuen in Blade II: a cult-favorite actor that was criminally underused.) The benevolent Morgan Freeman was placed in Wanted as nothing more than a gimmick. He was a credible actor supposed to give the movie its gravity, but the script botched this and Timurs’ camera didn’t have interest in the old man.

But what do you expect from Timur? I too was expecting nothing less than over the top mindless spectacular entertainment from Timur Bekmambetov. With Pang Brothers (Bangkok Dangerous), Timur is the next wave of the gang of CGI-oriented directors who couldn’t tell a story straight. We might as well call them “The Cult of George Lucas”. In Star Wars franchise, all the human characters are archetypal in the blandest way –what an irony that the only humane portrait in Star Wars franchise is the relationship between C3PO and R2D2, the androids.

In Wanted, the only humane thing is Timur’s (and mine) fascination with Angelina Jolie’s lips. Oh, and do you notice the eyes too?