by Jonathan Owen

Created on: July 07, 2008

"Wanted" is an action picture that taps into the escapist fantasy of emasculated male office drones. Its testosterone-laden theatrics are sure to excite those poor schlubs mired in the routine banality of their 9-to-5 jobs. Directed by Russian auteur,Timur Bekmanbetov, whose hits abroad include "Day Watch" and "Night Watch," "Wanted" serves as his first invasion of the American mainstream, usurping the action genre from John Woo and Michael Bay. The film is an adaptation of Mark Millar's graphic novel series.

In the opening sequence of "Wanted," Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) offers a starkly different voice-over than Carrie Bradshaw's annoyingly chipper introduction in that other summer film "Sex and the City." His disillusionment is palpable as he sneers at his overweight boss during an office birthday party. Through his embittered tone, we learn of the insignificance of his accountant job title and life through an empty Google search that returns no results after a check of his name. Unbeknownst to Wesley, the panic attack that grips him during a dressing down by his boss is the key to unlocking his super assassin abilities. Fumbling with anxiety medications, he eventually becomes the unlikeliest of badasses-like Milton from the film "Office Space" who burns down the building after being trodden upon one too many times. It's quite amusing that the red stapler, Wesley's boss is brandishing, was also the impetus of discontent in "Office Space."

Wesley is a young man with an identity crisis but rather than truly confront his crisis of identity or his cheating girlfriend, he languishes in cowardice until he meets Fox (Angelina Jolie) who informs him of the valiant death of his assassin father and his own secret destiny in the Fraternity. The Fraternity is a band of assassins that serve as bad guy exterminators, slaying victims for their future misdeeds, borrowing an idea from Tom Cruise's "Minority Report." The fraternity receives its targets from the "Loom of Fate"-a mystical and omniscient God-like weaving apparatus located in the textile factory that serves as the Fraternity's headquarters. After learning this, the viewer immediately suspects that these Fraternity members are just as misguided as the lampshade-wearing morons that populate our nation's college campuses.

However, the Fraternity of Assassins is a thousand year old order which is given gravitas and respectability by its nattily-attired leader Sloan (Morgan Freeman) who urges Wesley to abscond from

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