Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Other articles by Phil Villarreal:

'Conduit' leads new games lineup Local scene: Extra stands up to Johnny DeppAmphi grad, 33, picked for White House FellowshipTucson brothers create iPhone sensationDirector's layoff a blow to AZ Film OfficeEsplendor Resort offer: Stay now, pay later 'Ghostbusters' rocks the video game world Local scene: Production coordinator pushes Tucson localesNow playing: locally made studio films'40 Under 40' will celebrate Tucson's top professionals

Finance and Accounting
Charles E. Gillman Company
Accounting Specialist Sales and Marketing
Everready Glass
Sales Reps Health Care
CENTRAL ARIZONA COLLEGE
DIRECTOR OF HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT Mechanical
Komatsu Equipment Co
Resident Field Mechanic Construction
West-Press
Printing Health Care
Sierra Tucson
Eating Disorders Program Coordinator Administrative & Professional
Jorgensen Brooks Group
Counselor

Remember watching "The Matrix" for the first time? Remember walking out of the theater in a giddy daze, questioning everything you saw, wondering if every phone booth was a secret pathway into another realm? And maybe you weren't some loser in a dead-end job but in fact a secret ninja assassin chosen one?

I had forgotten that feeling, but "Wanted" brought it back. Even now I feel that at any moment Angelina Jolie will tap me on the shoulder and pull me headlong into a world of covert assassinations with bendy bullets and oracular weaving looms that predict the future.

Like "The Matrix," "Wanted" distorts your view of reality, ripping up the screen with a distinctive style that bends time, scale and motion at its whim. With more twists than Chubby Checker and a car chase that makes "The French Connection" look like county fair bumper cars, the film leaves blazing tire trails into your psyche.

It's a cage-rattling triumph from Kazakh-Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, whose razor-toothed vampire films "Night Watch" and "Day Watch" entranced American arthouses.

James McAvoy stars as Wesley, a nebbish accountant who cowers in his cubicle to hide from his browbeating boss, and whose energy-drink-guzzling deadbeat best pal is having sex with his shrewish girlfriend.

But greatness is thrust upon Wesley one fateful day at the convenience store, when shadowy assassin Fox (Jolie) confronts him and helps him run from a gunman who's stalking him. They race off in that car chase that's so killer that other chases should pay royalties to its agents.

Fox leads Wesley to a super-secret assassin lair in which Sloan (Morgan Freeman) tells him his entire life has been a lie and the dad who abandoned him as an infant was actually the world's finest killer and has willed $3 million into his parched checking account.

Like "The Matrix" and "Batman Begins," "Wanted" earns its thrills by sending its protagonist through a gantlet of impossibly difficult training. We're talking "American Gladiators" stuff, only with knives and guns and no helmets. Wesley is beaten and bloodied hourly as he learns to disarm guys twice his size, bend bullets around targets (turns out all it takes is a flick of the wrist) and mentally slow down time.

Once it's finally time for Wesley to use his new abilities, Bekmambetov unleashes decades of pent-up former Soviet angst onto the audience in the form of dazzling action sequences. Nothing cold about this war.

For a film throbbing with explosions and catchphrases, there's a respectable amount of gray matter at work. It's joyful yet dispiriting to see Wesley coming alive for the first time only as he's learning how to kill people. He trashes his standards and inhibitions for something of a holy war he doesn't quite understand as he's drawn deeper into this new "real world." There's also the age-old brain teaser: If Angelina Jolie asks you to do something that's morally wrong, what validity do morals have?

And the rabbit hole keeps going deeper. "Wanted" is a movie to see three times and maybe spend more time hanging out at convenience stores waiting for a fateful tap on the shoulder.