At The Fleapit: Wanted (2008)

For a woman who has made it quite clear that she doesn't like action films, as with Death Proof, Rachel has ended up enjoying one of "my" films more than I did.

Being the wise woman she is, she did point out that if I hadn't read the graphic novel of Wanted before hand, I might have liked the film adaptation more. I'm not so sure.

Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan's screenplay is so watered down and sanitised from Mark Millar's original idea that Wanted is little more than A.N. Other Hollywood action flick with several spectacular stunt sequences - 90 per cent of which you would have seen in the trailers.

With the mad genius behind Nightwatch and Daywatch at the helm, Timur Bekmambetov, I was expecting some clever touches and there are one or two - mostly near the start, while the film is remaining vaguely true, at least in spirit, to the original comics.

However, it soon veers off from the promised dark, nihilism and American Psycho-meets-Fight Club vibe, into bland lunacy, confusingly shot fight sequences and broad comedy: I cite exploding rats and the whole 'Loom Of Fate' gibberish.

I can understand making changes from the comics - they are probably way too twisted, anti-establishment and nasty for mainstream audiences - but except for the first 15 or 20 minutes, the only recognisable elements from the Millar's original material is the names of the lead characters - Wesley (James McAvoy) and Fox (Angelina Jolie).

Therefore an attempt to shoe-horn in the source material's underlying message of rebellion into the closing seconds, with Wesley's fourth wall-breaking challenge to the audience, is totally incongruous... and a bit laughable.

Wesley is an office drone, a nobody, who finds himself recruited into a millennia-old Fraternity of Assassins, who help bring out his 'suppressed' abilities (such as curving a bullet in mid-air and shooting the wings off a fly) to track down the man who killed his father.

But the story doesn't go anywhere interesting after that; I might as well have been watching some direct-to-DVD rip off of Casino Royale or The Bourne Ultimatium.

Now I'd enjoy a film of Angelina Jolie reading out the phone book and Rachel is a massive fan of James McAvoy, so neither of us were bored at any point, but even without my fresh knowledge of the graphic novel, I could tell this was a pretty vanilla affair aimed squarely at the popcorn-munching, multiplex masses.

Except that it's probably helping to shift a lot of copies of his comics and helping to line his pockets with pieces of silver, I'd suggest Millar take his name off this project and go to another studio to get it done properly. That's what I would have Wanted!