First Hit: Some good acting but a dumb premise.
The story is about Wesley (played by James McAvoy) who is tired of his life. He is stuck in a job he hates working for a woman who is abusive while his live-in girlfriend is having sex with his best friend and work mate. He is also susceptible to instantaneous anxiety attacks.
To show us how invisible he is, we watch him Google his name and nothing comes up, there are no entries for his name. While purchasing his long standing prescription for anti-anxiety drugs; Fox (played by Angelina Jolie) walks up to him, tells him she knew his father, that his father died the night before, and that the man pointing a gun at him at that moment is going to kill him.
From this moment on Wesley’s life is going to change. He is scurried off to meet a group of characters led by Sloan (played by Morgan Freeman). The group is called the “Fraternity” and they are assassins. The Fraternity’s roots go back hundreds of years and they get their assignments from a cloth weaving loom (Yes, a bit far-fetched). Wesley decides to become part of the group because he wants to avenge his father’s death by a rogue assassin.
Wesley goes through some arduous training and become a great assassin because it is in his genes to be able to slow time and action down.
McAvoy is a strong actor and shows his abilities by being able to shift from being intimidated, to extremely anxious, to anger, and then to smooth clarity in just seconds. Jolie is very adept at being a strong beautiful woman who lives on the edge. Freeman plays the smart heavy as only he and his voice can. The acting is good but the story way too far fetched by making a loom decide who lives and dies. Lastly, although it might be a neat trick and cinematically cool to let people curve a bullet’s path, I can just imagine people trying to curve bullet shots like they do in the film. It isn’t going to happen and I think some innocent real people are going to get hurt.
Overall: Some of the visuals were fun to watch. The acting was, at times, very good, but overall the premise wasn’t believable and therefore the film fell short of being good.