The Chinese and Japanese film industries have often given their martial-arts heroes superhuman abilities. Remember the old Japanese movies in which ninjas could toss shuriken (throwing stars) with machine-gun-like speed, and leap up to a corner of the ceiling before disappearing through the roof? Or, more recently, Ang Lee’s martial-arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, in which fights took place high above the ground as the combatants ran through the tops of trees, fighting with fists and swords? American westerns have always given the gunslinger perhaps unreal accuracy with a handgun, but the characters always seemed human, and one didn’t doubt whether such accuracy might be possible.

But Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov and screenwriters Michael Brandt, Chris Morgan, and Derek Haas stretch gunslingers’ abilities to absurd levels in their new film, Wanted, loosely based on Mark Millar’s comic-book miniseries of that title. These modern-day assassins are able to curve a bullet’s trajectory around obstacles to hit their targets, and to leap through plate-glass windows from skyscraper to skyscraper in pursuit of their prey. If you’re willing to believe that massive amounts of adrenaline can enable one to perform such feats, then you might enjoy Wanted more than I did.

Office worker Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) feels he’s wasting his life away in his cubicle. Terrorized by an obnoxious boss who gives him panic attacks, he dreams of escape. While at a pharmacy buying medication to quell his attacks, Wesley is approached by a sexy older woman, Fox (Angelina Jolie), who seems to possess unique fighting skills, which she then amply displays in a gunfight Wesley witnesses. Taken by Fox to an old textile mill that fronts for a clandestine organization, Wesley is recruited into The Fraternity, a 1000-year-old group of assassins led by Sloan (Morgan Freeman). It is The Fraternity’s role, Wesley is told, to maintain the balance of power in the world. The members consider themselves to be the instruments of fate, killing one person to save, perhaps, a thousand. It turns out that Wesley’s panic attacks are caused by a rare genetic trait: his mind floods his body with adrenaline, giving him the ability to "slow" time and to perform amazing feats -- feats his long-lost father, a member of The Fraternity, was also able to perform before he was murdered by a rogue assassin named Cross (Thomas Kretschmann). With this new knowledge, and now unwilling to return to his cubicle, Wesley undertakes the brutal training necessary to become a full-fledged member of The Fraternity and avenge his father’s death.

In his opening monologue on the tedium of cubicle life, Wesley may strike a familiar chord with office workers everywhere. Most of us have known or heard of bosses like Wesley’s, with whom one must celebrate at office parties while secretly imagining his or her demise. With this promising start, Wanted will bring in the many fans of Dilbert. However, the screenwriters soon resort to tired Hollywood clichés, and Wanted loses the momentum of its opening punch. The first and most notable of these is the "new recruit" cliché: The rookie is brutalized and beaten, and only when he is all but destroyed does he learn. (If this were an effective teaching tool, why don’t we see it used in our school system?) To recover from his frequent beatings, Wesley must sleep in a bath of secret ingredients while covered in a waxy substance supposed to speed up his healing. I suspect that the real reason for this plot contrivance is to reveal Angelina Jolie’s tattooed back and naked derrière as she, too, recovers from some injury -- an interesting sight, but not worth the price of admission.

We are also to marvel at the ingenious assassinations in which Wesley participates, such as shooting a target from the roof of a moving train, and curving a bullet’s path through glass windows, around innocent bystanders, and into the chest or head of the intended victim. I couldn’t help but think it would be easier to wait until the target goes to the bathroom, then shoot him when his hands are occupied. Becoming known as the Washroom Assassin might not seem glamorous, and no self-respecting Hollywood assassin would ever kill someone on the john -- but what do I know about assassination techniques? Except for a few weeks in my high school chess club, I’ve never been a member of a covert organization.

Wanted has some good moments and some style -- it’s packed with action, and I was never bored -- but the action is predictable, there’s little suspense, and the plot twists are easy to see coming from a long way away. Nor, despite my willingness to accept similar superhuman feats in Asian martial-arts films, could I buy those swerving bullets and leaps between skyscrapers -- and Wanted can’t be recommended for its style and action alone. If you want to see an excellent film in this genre, rent Paul Greengrass’s The Bourne Ultimatum.

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