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BY MAGGIE SCOTT

It’s a toss-up which is bigger on Wesley Gibson’s back—the yellow streak or the sign that says, “Kick Me.” Forget the poor guy who got sand kicked in his face on the beach.
In “Wanted,” Russian director Timur Bekmambetov’s seismically brutal action fantasy, Wes (James McAvoy) is the kind of weakling whose shadow is afraid of its shadow.

An emotional punching bag for everyone from his girlfriend, who’s providing lunch time R&R for Wes’s co-worker, to his belligerently belittling Queen-B boss, Wes would rather pop panic pills than pop his tormentors.

This puppet/boy is in need of a very special cricket to help him become a real man. And, one night, by jiminy, she’s there. A gauntly gorgeous girl named Fox (Angelina Jolie) who gives him a joy ride into the dark side of an unbelievable revelation: Wes is the son of an assassinated assassin. Not just any assassin. A “supersensory trained” assassin, who was a member of something called “The Fraternity.”

With his heart going at 400 beats a minute after following an order to “shoot the wings off the flies,” Wes is introduced to some people who are “all very good at killing.” Their leader, Sloan (Morgan Freeman), knows Wes has had it with his old life of being “beat down.”

But, most of his initiation and early training involves getting beat up…regularly. First by Fox, then by a man who is not only a figurative butcher, but a literal one, too; since he appears to be in charge of the organization’s meat locker. The rationale behind the abuse is to “repair a lifetime of bad habits.” Once he’s mastered the good habit of bending the path of a lethal bullet to its target, he’s officially welcomed into the Fraternity and into the secret of the Loom of Fate.

Operating out of a textile factory, the Fraternity takes its orders for its next victims from this artifact of the ancient band of weavers who removed society’s un-desirables centuries ago. Tested, toned and attitude-adjusted, Wes is ready to hunt down the man who killed his father.

With gallons of gore, buckets of blood, boring blather and bloated, bodacious special effects, writers Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan bludgeon the beejeezus out of the everyman-turned-superman genre. Let’s hope that McAvoy has gotten it out of his system.

A Spyglass Entertainment production, Universal Pictures release rated R for graphic violence, language, nudity and brief, strong sex situations.

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