WantedSave

We open in Chicago. Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) — a 25-year-old account-management cubicle worker at a soul-crushing financial-services firm — narrates his miserable daily life. His girlfriend is sleeping with his best friend in his own apartment. His boss is a screaming overweight woman who derives sadistic satisfaction from publicly humiliating him. He has panic attacks that he treats with anti-anxiety medication purchased from a drug-store chain. He cashes his paycheck and pays the rent and goes home to a small studio where the cycle repeats. The opening 8 minutes establish the anti-corporate worker-alienation that drives the entire film's narrative thesis.

Wesley is approached at a Chicago drug-store pharmacy by Fox (Angelina Jolie) — a tattooed, leather-jacketed assassin who reveals that Wesley's estranged father was a member of an ancient assassins' guild called the Fraternity. His father has just been killed by a rogue Fraternity assassin named Cross. The Fraternity wants Wesley to take his father's place. Fox saves Wesley from a Cross assassination attempt in the pharmacy aisle — the opening action sequence that establishes the film's slow-motion-violence aesthetic. The sequence is approximately 4 minutes of choreographed chaos through Chicago streets and ends with Wesley being driven to the Fraternity's headquarters.

Wesley is brought to the Fraternity's headquarters — a massive abandoned textile mill in Chicago's industrial corridor that has been converted into a training facility and ritual chamber. He meets Sloan (Morgan Freeman) — the guild's calm, paternal-seeming leader. The Fraternity uses 'curved bullets' — a technique allowing trained assassins to bend bullet trajectories around obstacles via wrist-flick combined with controlled-breathing-induced heart-rate manipulation. The technique is presented as both physically real and mystically-energy-driven; the film leaves the ambiguity unresolved. Wesley initially refuses to join. Sloan offers him a single demonstration: Wesley is shown a bullet hovering motionless in mid-air, then redirected. Wesley accepts.

Wesley undergoes brutal training. The Fraternity's training methodology is inspired by various international martial-arts and military-special-forces programs. The training sequences include: extended periods of physical beatings (designed to elevate Wesley's pain-tolerance to assassin levels), psychological-warfare exercises (Sloan's lieutenants psychologically torment Wesley to break down his corporate-worker mental defenses), and weapons-training using both traditional firearms and exotic-Fraternity-specific weapons. The training is approximately 35 minutes of screen time. Wesley's transformation from corporate-cubicle worker to combat-trained assassin is depicted as physically violent and psychologically traumatic — but ultimately empowering.

The Fraternity uses an ancient mystical loom that produces 'death-warrants' — small slips of cloth with the names of targeted assassination-marks. The Loom of Fate (depicted as a physical apparatus running constantly within the Fraternity's central ritual chamber) is alleged to be the literal voice of fate itself, identifying individuals whose deaths will improve the broader cosmic balance. Each Fraternity assassin receives cloth-encoded death-warrants; their mission is to execute the Loom's identified marks without question. Wesley is told that his mission is to track and kill Cross — the rogue Fraternity assassin who killed his father.

Wesley discovers his father is dead. He has been visiting his father's grave at a Chicago cemetery as part of his training. Sloan tells him the truth: his father was killed by Cross during a Fraternity internal dispute. Cross has been a rogue Fraternity operative for years, killing other Fraternity members and disrupting the guild's broader cosmic-balance work. Wesley accepts the mission. His training continues at increasingly accelerated pace. He develops the curve-the-bullet technique through repeated practice. He becomes the Fraternity's most-promising trainee in years. His transformation is approximately 75% complete by the film's midpoint.

Wesley discovers the truth in the film's third act: Sloan has been manipulating the Loom of Fate. The death-warrants have been doctored — Sloan has been using the Fraternity's broader cosmic-mission to systematically assassinate his own political and personal rivals across global power-structures. The Fraternity itself has been corrupted from within for decades. Wesley's father — the original Wesley-mentor figure who left the Fraternity when he discovered Sloan's manipulation — was killed by Cross under Sloan's orders. Cross has actually been the noble character: he has been killing Sloan-aligned Fraternity members in self-defense.

Wesley realizes the revelation: he is Cross's son, not Mr. Gibson's son. Cross has been protecting him for years from Sloan's broader manipulation. The reveal reframes the entire film's narrative — Wesley has been recruited and trained to kill his own biological father by the same man who killed his estranged father-figure. Wesley confronts Cross at a Chicago train-station — Cross is attempting to save Wesley from Sloan's broader manipulation. Wesley initially attempts to kill Cross; the truth is revealed during their confrontation; Cross is killed by Fraternity agents before Wesley can prevent it.

Wesley returns to the Fraternity headquarters with a mission of vengeance. The final battle takes place at the Fraternity textile mill. Wesley uses the curve-the-bullet technique to assassinate Sloan and approximately 12 corrupted Fraternity lieutenants. The choreography is approximately 18 minutes of slow-motion-violence: Wesley moving through the mill, dispatching Sloan-aligned assassins with curving-bullet precision. Fox initially sides with Sloan, then switches sides mid-fight; Wesley's romantic chemistry with Fox is resolved during the third-act battle. Fox is killed in the final confrontation — she shoots herself with a curving-bullet sequence that takes out the remaining Fraternity assassins surrounding her.

Wesley defeats Sloan in the final one-on-one combat sequence. Sloan attempts to use Wesley's anti-corporate-worker rage as a weapon — telling Wesley that joining Sloan's broader manipulation will improve his life. Wesley refuses. He kills Sloan with a single curve-the-bullet shot. The Fraternity is dismantled. Wesley returns to his original Chicago cubicle-worker existence — but transformed. His final voice-over reframes the entire film's narrative: he has been reborn through the Fraternity training; his post-training identity is empowered; he is no longer the corporate-worker victim he was at the film's opening.

The film's epilogue. Wesley confronts his boss at his Chicago office, the same boss who had been humiliating him at the film's opening. He delivers an extended verbal-empowerment monologue that has become one of the 'what the fuck have you done lately' speeches in 2000s cinema. He fires a curve-the-bullet shot through his boss's keyboard, intentionally missing — establishing his refusal to misuse his trained abilities. He walks out of the office. The film closes with Wesley addressing the camera directly: 'What the fuck have you done lately?' The line has been referenced as one of the most-empowering closing-lines in 2000s cinema.

Commercial and critical reception. Wanted grossed $343 million worldwide on a $75 million production budget — major commercial success. Critics responded positively to the visual style (Rotten Tomatoes 71%); the curve-the-bullet visual effect was widely praised as innovative. James McAvoy's performance was widely cited as his commercial-Hollywood breakthrough — his leading-man-action persona was established. The film established director Timur Bekmambetov as a major Hollywood directorial voice. The Mark Millar source comic — Wanted, a 6-issue limited series published 2003-2004 — has been referenced across the broader Mark Millar adaptation pipeline. Millar would go on to adapt his other comics for film: Kick-Ass (2010), Kingsman (2014), and Old Man Logan adapted partially into Logan (2017).