Wanted

It's unclear who or what is the subject of the title of this film. Is James McAvoy wanted or the king assassin he's been recruited into a weird fraternity of killers to shoot to pieces? Is Angelica Jolie wanted by McAvoy or is it the exciting, no-holds-barred lifestyle she represents? Perhaps a more meaningful title is wanted?

A trifling quibble. If you want bullets bending through space in ways that would make Einstein shit his underpants, you've got them. If you want way, way better vehicular spills and craziness than any FastFurious movie, you've got them too. Exploding rats, yeah you can have them. Stabby, stabby big knives scares; punchy, punchy violence; Chris 'What A' Pratt being smashed in the face with a computer keyboard; Morgan Freeman's join the dots mole face and velveteen voice; spectacular train crash...

Take it from me, there is a truck load of action. Action, action, action. That's probably what the director shouted in triplicate at the start of every single take. And after the film was wrapped the entire cast and crew had coronaries. Or didn't, but could have done. It's a big enough strain on the heart and adrenal glands just watching, let alone taking part in all this frantic action, action, action. In a good way.

Weird fact about Jolie: she does look quite a lot like her father, Jon Voigt, yet it's a look that suits her while it makes his face look like a misshapen lump of blurgh. He's not in this film, that would be confusing, just like it is in that Tomb Raider one.

Whether we buy into the assassin's creed formed in an old cotton mill or not is irrelevant. Whether the finer details of the plot make actual sense or not doesn't matter either. It's a high octane, ball tightener of a spectacle and sometimes that's sufficient to make the nipples harden like croutons in a bowl of sex soup. Terrible simile. Forget I used it. But don't forget to watch this film.

Olympus Has Fallen

Weren't they shooting this and White House Down at the same time? They could have shared costs by using the same fake government buildings. And by not making White House Down.

Those who like their leading men to be eye candy will prefer Channing Tatumoneal in the other one. Those who prefer protagonists to look and sound convincing when they deliver gruesome one-liners and stab bad guys in the brain will opt for Gerard 'I Hate You' Butler.

This one's got Koreans kidnapping the president. Koreans were the naughty villains of choice for a while, like in the remake of Red Dawn. Hollywood not allowed to admit all the time that rogue terrorists with no allegiance to specific countries are the real problem to global security nowadays.

So, remember London Has Fallen? Well don't. It's not been made. This is the first movie and it's Olympus that falls. Olympus being the code name for the President. Not grandiose in the slightest, eh, referencing the home of Greek gods when you come up with a code name for your President.

Diamond Face bad guy from a Bond film is Non Diamond Face villain masterminding evil antics in the bunker below the White House after a completely unfeasible attack on Washington's favourite monuments and symbols. Aaron Eckhart is the Prez because he's got a jaw made from granite. Or is it marble? Something super strong.

And Gerry Butty runs about in the darkened, blowdy uppedy corridors of power, democracy's last chance, strangling, stabbing, shooting and swearing his fucking way to hero-dom. That's not a sexual fetish, by the way, hero-dom, it's a clumsy way of saying he's the hero despite having been unable to prevent the death of the President's wife at the beginning of the film.

I reckon he spends enough time in confined spaces to know what a TV dinner feels like. I reckon they'll make a sequel. Oh they have.