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SOME
things about the summer movie season are as predictable
as...well, the summer movie season. There will always be
movies based on comic books—like Wanted. There
will always be movies worked on by five writers—like
Wanted. There will be movies starring Angelina Jolie
cast as a kind of gun-wielding fashion model—like
Wanted. And action thrillers with body counts that
rise faster than the national debt clock—like Wanted.
So
what’s different about Wanted, which opens
Friday, and its relationship to the very season that
makes Hollywood the happiest? Among other things, that
it’s directed by a Russian horror stylist; it stars a
Scotsman whose biggest films have been the
quasi-art-house hits The Last King of Scotland
and Atonement. And that it features, in the
all-important role of über-villain, a German best known
for playing either Nazis or the pope.
“I was
really insecure when they hired me,” said Thomas
Kretschmann, the East German-born actor whose parts have
included an officer of the Third Reich in The Pianist
and the title character in the TV movie Have No Fear:
The Life of Pope John Paul II. “Angelina does it
all—give her a weapon, and she knows what to do. Me, it
was, ‘When can I start weapons training? Please!!!’”
THOSE LIPS...
“She’s
chilled-out, a nice woman,” McAvoy said of his costar.
“She doesn’t take it all too seriously. You know, we’re
not changing people’s lives with a movie like this, and
if you can’t have fun on the set of something like
Wanted, then someone else should probably be doing it.”
For all
his firearms phobia, it’s Kretschmann who kicks things
off, when his character, Cross, murders Mr. X (David
O’Hara), and we discover that the recently deceased had
a son, Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), who is a miserable,
cuckolded accountant. And yet...he carries the latent
genetic material to make him the world’s greatest
assassin. Who can help him realize his potential? The
mysterious Sloan (Morgan Freeman), Fox (Jolie) and a
team of trainers who nearly kill Wesley, in preparing
him to kill others.
Did we
mention that the team is part of a 1,000-year-old
tradition of assassins founded by a guild of weavers?
The mystery looms....
“That
they were willing to cast me meant they were willing to
do things totally differently,” said the Glasgow-born
McAvoy. “And I thoroughly enjoyed it. When I read the
script, I was impressed, but I wasn’t entirely sold. But
then I saw his other films. He’s so different, so
weird.”
The
outskirts of supernatural
“HE” is
director Timur Bekmambetov, Soviet-born (in what is now
Kazakhstan) and, along with filmmakers such as Guillermo
del Toro and Sam Raimi, one of the leading explorers of
the outskirts of supernatural cinema. His
double-barreled vampire thrillers Night Watch and
Day Watch opened up all-new veins of visual
mayhem en route to box-office success.
And yet,
despite Wanted’s defiance of physics, medicine
and use of bullets that shoot around corners, he said
special effects take a back seat to character. And that
on Wanted, he had the same type of relationship
with his performers he had enjoyed on his Russian films.
“It was
very collaborative and free, and without statuses,” he
said, then laughed at his own mangled English.
“Sometimes, the players create ideas, and then we
translate them to CG, but the most powerful special
effect is the actor. All the visual style is an
extension of character.”
ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?
“You
come on set, you’ve seen her all over the place, but it
takes about 30 seconds to get over any intimidation.She
makes it that way. She’s easygoing, but she’s a strong
woman. I like strong women,” said
Wanted director Timur
Bekmambetov of his globally megafamous star.
Bekmambetov said that he got what he wanted, and made
the film that he wanted, although McAvoy said the ending
of the film is now completely different from what they
shot. “There was a massive 10-minute fight scene between
me and Sloan that’s gone. The film is better for it. I
knew it would be violent. But this is a film that
luxuriates in its own violence. It bathes in its own
violence.”
Adult
action thriller
AND
this, the actor said, really separates Wanted
from the standard summer fare. “It’s an adult-oriented
action-thriller, a hard-R, no-kids-allowed kind of film.
You don’t see that much in summer. But it’s cool. It’s
different. That’s why I was interested in the first
place.”
Kretschmann is used to violence: He starred in Grimm
Love, which was about a real-life case of
cannibalism and was deemed unreleasable in Germany.
“That almost never happens,” he said.
For all
the creative angles and counterintuitive characteristics
of Wanted, the big question remains...Ms. Jolie.
“She’s chilled-out, a nice woman,” McAvoy said. “She
doesn’t take it all too seriously. You know, we’re not
changing people’s lives with a movie like this, and if
you can’t have fun on the set of something like
Wanted, then someone else should probably be doing
it.”
Kretschmann echoed his Wanted colleague. “You
come on set, you’ve seen her all over the place, but it
takes about 30 seconds to get over any intimidation. She
makes it that way. She’s easygoing, but she’s a strong
woman. I like strong women.
“She
knows what she’s after,” he added. “And she goes for the
kill.”
Her odd mix of Craft and ‘Croft’
By John Anderson,
Newsday
LIKE
many Hollywood goddesses—Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner and
Michelle Pfeiffer come immediately to mind—Angelia Jolie
has had to confront the curse of good looks (yes, weep
for her). They may open doors, but they can keep an
actress from being taken seriously. Jolie, however, has
flirted with the limiting labels of babedom with movies
that beg for ridicule (such as Lara Croft, Tomb
Raider) and then taken on assignments that would
challenge any actress. Below are some highs and lows.
Gia
(1998).
Yes, casting Jolie as America’s proto-supermodel
exhibited the kind of risk-taking the movies are famous
for, even made-for-cable movies. But Jolie’s performance
as the beautiful and tragic Gia Marie Carangi won her a
Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild award and an Emmy
nomination. It also showed that the actress was capable
of a certain on-screen alchemy.
Girl,
Interrupted (1999).
Her performance at the Academy Awards was weird—she was
snuggling with her brother. Yet the role that got her
there, as the disturbed Lisa Rowe, sociopathic dormmate
to Winona Ryder, was chillingly human and convincingly
unhinged. What was intended as Ryder’s comeback turned
into Jolie’s coming-out party. And won her a Best
Supporting Actress Oscar.
Lara
Croft, Tomb Raider (2001).
Some
theorize that Jolie was created on a computer (a horny
14-year-old boy’s computer). So it makes a twisted kind
of sense that she’d star in one of the first of what is
now a contemporary plague: the video-game adaptation.
It’s also a twisted kind of sense that Lara Croft—and
its 2003 sequel LCTR: The Cradle of Life—made her
a bona-fide international star, despite reducing the
actress to the status of highly athletic décor.
Sky
Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004).
Kerry Conran’s wholly computerized homage to ‘30s serial
adventures and the giant flying robot featured Jolie in
a very small role—that of Franky, the eye-patch-wearing
aeronautical pirate and ex-girlfriend of the hero (Jude
Law). But Jolie showed a real sense of flair and, more
important, humor, self-deprecating and otherwise. She
also ate Gwyneth Paltrow’s lunch.
A Mighty
Heart (2007).
Jolie
starred as Mariane Pearl, widow of murdered journalist
Daniel Pearl, in what was, dramatically, an impossible
situation: The real-life Mariane had written the book;
Brad Pitt—a.k.a. Mr. Jolie—was a producer, and Jolie
herself seemed in charge of what was ostensibly a
Michael Winterbottom-helmed ship. Jolie’s stardom had
long eclipsed her talents as an actress, and she would
be scrutinized rigorously in portraying a real-life
person. But Winterbottom didn’t help matters—each time
there was a conflict among the principal characters, for
instance, the discussion would terminate with a close-up
of Jolie, whose Mariane invariably had the solution. The
moment of Daniel Pearl’s death was operatic; the way
Jolie dominated the film was unseemly. Not a great
movie, but a great example of stardom sublimating a
story. |
