CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
‘Wanted’ With Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy Concocts Curving Bullet in Gluttonously Entertaining Blockbuster
CHICAGO – With curving, clinking and kissing bullets, “Wanted” indeed does Chicago proud. And Angelina Jolie sells it. And Morgan Freeman is ominous. And in his body of work, James McAvoy – the star of this orgasmic summer blockbuster – becomes a man.
Rating: 4.5/5.0 |
Many Chicagoans have been keenly aware of the film’s local filming throughout downtown Chicago and Broadview, Ill.
After also focusing its filming lens throughout the Czech Republic and Hungary, Chicago’s prominence reigns surprisingly dominant and central to the film’s assassin-based plot of one “apathetic nobody’s transformation into an unparalleled enforcer of justice”.
James McAvoy is the man of the hour, and in a short 110 minutes, is handed a Hollywood renovation from an initially fear-laden, listless boy to a surgically precise killer who’d give Matt Damon’s character (Jason Bourne) in “The Bourne Ultimatum” a fight for his life.
“Wanted” features Chicago front and center not only in its aesthetics but also central to its high-adrenaline pacing and action sequences. The Universal Pictures film needed exactly this big-city, fast-action feel to haunt McAvoy with the necessary vibrations in his quest to decide who he really is.
While “Wanted” is chock full of innovation – especially in its fight sequences and “The Matrix”-inspired special effects on ludicrously entertaining Hollywood steroids – the film at times still falls victim to the traditional stereotypes of what you’d expect in an assassin action-thriller with an ever-increasing death count.
“Wanted,” which was pushed back to a June 27, 2008 release date from an initial March 28, 2008 plan, won’t accrue the high marks and huge numbers it deserves because of its story alone. This is an outright action fest of sensory enchantment, carnal killing and orgasmic delight.
Fox (Angelina Jolie) shoots from the driver’s side of her Dodge Viper in the action-thriller that tells the tale of one apathetic nobody’s transformation into an unparalleled enforcer of justice in “Wanted”.
Photo credit: Universal Pictures
James McAvoy as Wesley in the action-thriller that tells the tale of one apathetic nobody’s transformation into an unparalleled enforcer of justice in “Wanted”.
Photo credit: Jaap Buitendijk