When describing this movie, they described it as a cross between The Matrix and The Fast and the Furious. And I must say, that was a pretty good description.
James McAvoy is Wesley Gibson, an office drone who suffers from anxiety attacks, and an overbearing bitch of a boss. His best friend is boning his girlfriend, and she is an insufferable bitch also. He's basically deep in a rut, and there looks to be no escape.
Til he goes to the drugstore, to fill his prescription. There, he meets Fox, played by Angeline Jolie. She saves him in a gun battle against Cross, and its pretty much nonstop action from there.
He's introduced into an ancient assassins guild, under the cover of being Weavers, and he's needed to bring in a rogue assassin.
There's alot of plot twists and turns, and I don't want to spoil anything. So I'll just move onto what I feel are the plus and minuses.
James McAvoy wasn't bad. Apparantly he's a pretty big TV star, no clue who he was. But he was pretty solid playing both the stressed out accounts manager, to the fledgling assassin, to eventual confident assassin.
Angeline Jolie was good. Personally, I thought she looked too skinny, but that's just me. You do get to see her ass in it, so thats always a plus. I like the fact she was all tatted up, and they added some to her already large collection of tatts.
Other roles of note, Dato Bakhtadze had a small, but good role as the Butcher. Thomas Kretschmann was great as Cross, and Terrence Stamp was his usual stellar self as Pekwarsky.
The rest were quite average, including Morgan Freeman. Usually he's lights out for me, but he was quite average in this.
The stunts were awesome. The chase scenes, both on foot, and in cars, were out of this world. The train scene was banannas. There were a few cool fight scenes, and the gun work was out of this world. High marks for the effects.
The script was great in parts, and average in some, with one blah spot. With all the plot twists though, they did a pretty good job holding it all together. I think that it takes a real talent to keep a storyline and its substories together, and they did a pretty good job here. There were a few leaps of faith, but at least they made an effort to try to explain them somewhat.
The pacing was good. Fast paced, but not too fast paced. There wasn't a whole lot of filler, which was a nice change. I would have liked to have seen about 15 more minutes of movie to be honest. If they'd have done it right, it would have filled in some things better, and not dragged it out. It was a respectable 110 minutes, and you didn't really feel you were there that long.
I thouroughly enjoyed the movie. I'm not a huge Angeline Jolie fan, but I enjoyed it all the same. It was a good role for her, one that she was believeable in. And the ending was just out of site. I didn't see it coming, and the people I went with had the same reaction I did, which was a jaw dropper.
I give this movie 9 out of 10 bullets.
