I don't remeber Wanted ( 2008 ) to be that good

  Blender Dumbass
June 10, 2025

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#wanted #TimurBekmambetov #JamesMcAvoy #AngelinaJolie #film #review #action #movies #cinemastodon

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Timur Bekmambetov is kind of a Russian film-god. In Russian speaking countries people like to poke fun at how utterly terrible Russian cinema is. Like think about this: for English-speakers I had to defend Michael Bay as being good. In Russia Michael Bay is just simply good. Because the frame of reference ( which is other Russian movies ) just makes something like Michael Bay be an unobtainable high that is impossible to reach. The closest from Russian filmmakers to that kind of thing is Timur Bekmambetov. The director of Wanted.

If you never was in post Soviet country in 2008 you don't know how much of a big deal this movie was. For Americans, I suppose, it was just another action film. For anybody who speaks Russian it was a miracle.

Bekmambetov is kind of strange. His mother is Jewish ( making him Jewish ) but his father is from Kazakhstan, which means he probably cringes a lot at Sasha Baron Cohen ( a Jewish man ) who played Borat. He himself was born in Russia making him Russian. But then he is against what Russia does to Ukraine so I suppose it would be really dangerous for him to go into Russia right now.

In any case arguably the best Russian ( not Soviet ) movies that there are were made by Bekmambetov. He made a huge splash in 2004 with Night Watch ( Ночной дозор ) which was so good, the kind of quality of the film was unheard-off for Russian cinema. Don't get me wrong, the film is fucking cheesy as hell. Like there is a scene in Night Watch where the devil is standing on the road. And the Night Watch ( vampires that hunt supernaturals ) are almost hitting him with their van. But the driver hits the breaks so hard that the van does a flip over the devil character. And in the sequel one character does a drift-flip onto a building to park the car inside of it. Like what's the point? Other than: it's cool.

So Wanted! Imagine that. Suddenly a small little Jewish Kazach director from Russia goes into Hollywood to make a proper epic movie. Everybody freaked out! It was a phenomenon. It was THE phenomenon. It was the number one thing in the news in post-soviet countries for a few months.

But not only that. I don't know if you know, there was a fully Russian version of the movie available only in Russian-speaking cinemas. In that version of the film all of the text anywhere in the picture was converted into Russian. There is a shot where James McAvoy's character hits Chris Pratt's character with the keyboard. And the letters on the keyboard form the words "FUCK YOU" in slow motion, where the U is a tooth of Chris Pratt. In that Russian version they form "ПШЕЛ НАU" which means kind of the same thing, but written in slang speak.




Usually when they dub movies into Russian they just do that to the sound. Which they are actually very good at. But this time it was done to pretty much everything. Sometimes for animation they would do the logo in Russian. And since Wanted there was more of that kind of translated stuff in animation. Some Disney cartoons now are trying to have shots of stuff important to the plot of be translated like this. But doing it to an R-rated action film? This was some dedication.

Re-watching this movie reticently made me realize that Timur Bekmambetov is actually very good at being Michael Bay. Like the movie feels like it is Michael Bay. It has this raw quality to it. Silly jokes. The main character is a little nervous dude that doesn't know what the hell is wrong with his life. James McAvoy's character feels like Shia LaBeouf in Transformers. Just it seems like Bekmambetov goes a little harder.

For example the action is a bit sillier than what you might expect from Michael Bay. Bay goes for impactful imagery. Bekmambetov goes for cool factor, no matter how utterly insane it might be. Like there is a shot where McAvoy's character should be killed. Or at least his legs should be broken from it. But no, he is fine. It's when Angelina Jolie drifts a Dodge Viper into him, with an open passenger door. While he is standing in there all scared. And instead of running him over, he ends up in the car.

I mean Bekmambetov did a movie where Abraham Lincols is a Vampire hunter and there is a shot where a horse-carriage is drifting all epically. Like what do you expect.

Yet! With all the complete disregard for reality in the movie, the movie goes hard as fuck! Like if you want a properly violent, heavy-metal action film. Like where the anger of the character is so hard, the score of the film becomes heavy-metal. This is the movie!

I don't know how Bekmambetov balanced it so well, but he did. And the movie is really good because of it. Like after all these years. And after all this hype wore off. I watched the movie and realized that I still really fucking dig it! It is amazing! In a twisted kind of silly way.

Happy Hacking!!!

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  Jeffrey c:9


@blenderdumbass It wasn't that good and so far from the source material that it would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

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