Wanted (2008)
Wanted is a Russian director Timur Bekmambetov's first Hollywood movie, he's best known from the soon to be trilogy of Night Watch and Day Watch. In a way the movie fulfilled my expectations of "leave your brains home and enjoy the ride" type of movie, but still I wasn't completely satisfied. Yes, the action was good, intuitive and plenty. The cast was ok and especially Angelina Jolie is always pleasant to watch. The pacing of the movie is fast and so is the music. So everything looked good thus far. Sure there's cars, people and bullets flying against all laws of nature, but that didn't bother, you kind of expect to see something like that in these kinds of movies. The script was silly and dumb as hell, but that didn't bother either. Yet still I wasn't enjoying the movie, even thou there are some funny scenes and some of the action scenes are close to brilliant, there was something missing. When I left the theatre I was thinking I could have wasted 2 hours of my life for something else. Then I started to think what did this movie lack that the other similar ones had which made this one so bad. It certainly wasn't the action, some of the scenes wipe the floor with your every day Matrixes and such. It wasn't the script or the cast either as there's sillier scripts and worse actors on far better movies. It was lacking attitude. It kind of felt like they were asking the viewers agreement to show him/her some hard action, like "excuse me but we're going to blow up a few cars and shoot a few hundred rounds of ammunition, hope you don't mind". There was no edge on this movie it just flowed past and left me empty wondering why on earth did I just waste my time and money on this. Some points for some of the action scenes and for the naked Jolie.
35%
Shoot 'Em Up (2007)
If Wanted was missing attitude, this had tons of it. Brilliant in your face action and genuinely funny dialogs. There's about 5 minutes of silence from the action in the whole movie. And just when you think it's going to settle down from the high gear it kicks in a turbo charge. This is what an action movie should look like in the 2000's, an instant classic.
100%
Hitman (2007)
Game based movies are rarely any good, and this definately isn't an exception. Really similar in themes as Wanted, but if Wanted was lacking attitude, this didn't even know what that is. I mean come on, Timothy Olyphant as a conract killer? He's a baby-faced, trimmed eyebrows, moisturized skin pussy. All I can say is this was pathetic.
16%
Smokin' Aces (2006)
This one on the other hand had quite a bit of attitude, some really funny scenes and a great cast (even Ben "one-face" Affleck managed not to raise hateful feelings in me), but the action was missing. The movie was paced as a highly packed action extravaganza, but there was too little action to keep the interest up. All in all worth the watch but don't think I'm going to watch this one ever again.
58%
Crank (2006)
Another fast paced action packed monster of a movie. This one had the attitude, the cast, the story, the action and the jokes that make up a great movie. Why it looses to Shoot 'Em Up, is because Shoot 'Em Up has a better sex scene and carrots give you more energy than Red Bull.
89%
Running Scared (2006)
I was thinking twice about bringing this up with the others as this is far more serious than the ones mentioned above (except for that waste of money emo-bullshit Hitman). But as you can't miss the similarities with Crank I decided to put it here too. It's not dead serious, there's quite a bit of humor, especially black humor, in it. And as the others this one is really fast paced too, thou the destruction and ammo/death count is far lower than in any of the others. Definitely worth the watch and I will surely get back to this some time again as it will find it's place in my collection.
81%
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