Wanted

James McAvoy plays a miserable office drone whose anxieties are swept away when he joins a society of hitmen who take their instructions from a supernatural loom. That's the premise and the plot of this wildly absurd and just as wildly entertaining action fantasy, adapted from a misanthropic graphic novel and directed by Timur Bekmambetov ("Nightwatch") with unhinged momentum and unrestrained spectacle. Bekmambetov just runs with it, creating a world where a secret society of God's hitmen race on the tops of moving trains and flip cars through the air to get a better angle on a kill shot. You either go with the fantasy or get stuck in the preposterousness of the entire premise and the flippant execution. I'm sold on it and on Angelina Jolie as the film's star player, who steals the spotlight from nominal star James McAvoy with her wicked moves and seductive smirk. Morgan Freeman, Terence Stamp and Thomas Kretschmann co-star.

The DVD includes the 20-minute overview "Cast and Characters," a collection of featurettes on the stunts and visual effects, a fawning profile of the director (with the cast and crew rhapsodizing over his creativity) and a piece on the original graphic novel, among the featurettes. The single extended scene is pretty anemic and included solely for the sardonic visual punchline. No commentary, but it's not really missed. Exclusive to the Blu-ray edition is an alternate medieval prologue and various "U-Control" interactive features. The picture-in-picture audio/video track and the "Scene Explorer" (with storyboards and production footage from select scenes) are fairly interesting, but I could do without the "motion comics" (repurposed from a separate featurette) and "Assassin Profiles." The "BD Live" functions were not accessible at the time of this review. Both the Blu-ray and the "2-Disc Special Edition" feature a digital copy of the film for portable media players.